• Question: in your opinion is global warming happening while the sun appears to be slowing down?

    Asked by marcusw to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 15 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      The sun definitely has a cycle of highs and lows, which might affect the temperature of the Earth, but these only last 11 years. We have a lot of data from about the last hundred years that show the gradual warming of the planet, so they might be related but the sun’s influence can’t be that strong.

    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      Global warming is happening!

      The earth’s climate changes slowly over periods of 10,000s or 100,000s of years, because of changes in the orbit of the earth around the sun, and because of natural variation in how much carbon dioxide and stuff there is in the atmosphere. The very very very slow change in the temperature of the sun, over billions of years, hasn’t affected the temperature of the planet much.

      But the warming that we’ve seen in the last century is 1000 times faster than anything we can see in the fossil record on earth. It is dangerously fast, and we can’t predict the outcome.

    • Photo: Nazim Bharmal

      Nazim Bharmal answered on 21 Mar 2012:

      Yes, there is a lot of evidence that global warming, caused by humans, is a more important factor than the slight dimming of the sun.

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