Physical Address
23,24,25 & 26, 2nd Floor, Software Technology Park India, Opp: Garware Stadium,MIDC, Chikalthana, Aurangabad, Maharashtra – 431001 India
By Vivek Saini
Claim
Earth’s irregular orbit around the sun and solar activities such as the Milankovitch cycles are the reason behind climate change. Humans have no power to determine the Earth’s solar orbit. Thus, climate change has got nothing to do with humans or CO2.
Fact
Milankovitch cycles do not explain modern warming. Over the last 40 years, solar radiation has decreased. There is greater scientific consensus that climate change is real and mainly caused by human emissions of greenhouse gasses.
Claim post:
What does the post say
In a viral X post, a filmmaker, Robin Monotti, claimed that the real reason behind climate change is because of the irregularities of Earth’s orbit around the Sun, Bray and Eddy solar cycles, three Milankovitch cycles and the solar flares. He explained in his tweet what solar inertial moment is and stated that humans have no power to regulate the Earth’s solar orbit, so neither humans nor CO2 has anything to do with climate change.
What we found
The amount of sunlight that reaches the planet’s surface can change depending on the sun’s energy output. Solar variations have had little impact on the recent climate changes that have been recorded, although these changes can affect the earth’s climate. Since 1978, satellites have been monitoring the quantity of solar energy that the globe gets. Despite increasing global surface temperatures, these observations reveal no net increase in the sun’s output.
A recent study of 88,125 climate-related publications revealed that more than 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific journals concur that humans are the primary driver of climate change.
What are the Milankovitch cycles?
Milutin Milankovitch, a Serbian scientist, hypothesized a century ago that long-term, collective effects of changes in Earth’s location relative to the Sun are a crucial driver of long-term climate and are responsible for initiating the beginning and end of glacial periods (Ice Ages).
Milankovitch cycles include:
- The eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit,
- The obliquity of its axis, and
- The precession of its spin axis.
These cycles impact the quantity of sunlight and, consequently, the energy that Earth receives from the Sun. They offer a solid framework for comprehending long-term climate shifts, such as the start and conclusion of the Ice Ages throughout Earth’s history.
Are Milankovitch cycles to blame for Climate change?
Milankovitch cycles cannot account for all climate change during the last 2.5 million years. More crucially, they cannot explain the current period of fast warming that the Earth has undergone since the pre-industrial period (between 1850 and 1900), notably since the mid-twentieth century. Scientists are sure that the recent warming on Earth is primarily the result of human activity, notably the direct intake of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the combustion of fossil fuels.
First, Milankovitch cycles operate over vast periods ranging from tens to hundreds of thousands of years. In contrast, Earth’s current warming has occurred from decades to centuries. Milankovitch cycles have had little effect on the amount of solar energy absorbed by Earth over the last 150 years. NASA satellite observations suggest that solar radiation has comparatively reduced over the last 40 years.
Second, Milankovitch cycles are only one component that may have contributed to past and contemporary climate change. Changes in the number of ice sheets and atmospheric carbon dioxide have played vital roles in determining the degree of temperature swings throughout the last several million years, even for Ice Age cycles.
Scientific consensus about Earth’s changing climate
Scientific data continues to suggest that human actions (mainly using fossil fuels) have warmed the Earth’s surface and ocean basins, affecting the Earth’s climate. This is founded on more than a century of scientific data that serves as the structural foundation of today’s civilization.
NASA Global Climate Change describes the current state of scientific knowledge regarding climate change while emphasizing NASA’s involvement in better understanding our home planet. This endeavor includes citing many peer-reviewed papers from research groups worldwide that demonstrate the correctness and consensus of research results (in this example, the scientific consensus on climate change) consistent with NASA’s scientific research portfolio.
Several studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals suggest that climate-warming trends over the last century are almost certainly the result of human activity. Furthermore, most of the world’s foremost scientific organizations have released public declarations endorsing this position. Some of them are as follows:
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
“It is unequivocal that the increase of CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere over the industrial era results from human activities. Human influence is the principal driver of many changes observed across the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere. Since systematic scientific assessments began in the 1970s, the influence of human activity on the warming of the climate system has evolved from theory to fact.”
American Meteorological Society
“Research has found a human influence on the climate of the past several decades. The IPCC (2013), USGCRP (2017), and USGCRP (2018) indicate that it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-twentieth century.”
U. S. Global Change Research Program
“Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily due to human activities.”
References:
- https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25733/climate-change-evidence-and-causes-update-2020
- https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966
- https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2948/milankovitch-orbital-cycles-and-their-role-in-earths-climate/
- https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/2949/why-milankovitch-orbital-cycles-cant-explain-earths-current-warming/
- https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence
- https://climate.nasa.gov/causes
- https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256538724_Quantifying_the_Consensus_on_Anthropogenic_Global_Warming_in_the_Scientific_Literature
- https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1003187107
- https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/
- https://www.ametsoc.org/index.cfm/ams/about-ams/ams-statements/statements-of-the-ams-in-force/climate-change1/
- https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/
