Neptune's brightness and solar variation

Thanks, Steve, for adding the pointers to the critiques.

I like the paper, even with its flaws, for two reasons:
(1) It is bait for the global warming denialists to misinterpret. Indeed, a Google search reveals some who looked at the abstract and assumed that the paper denied the anthropogenic causes. If they shout loud enough about it, we can come in and say, "Read the paper. It accepts that anthropogenic factors are the cause of Earth's warming."

(2) It shows how science can work, even in a heated political environment. Hammel and Lockwood thought their result was interesting. If the weak correlation they see is true, then those results may be signs of some solar effects that are not being considered in current climate models (even if those effects are minuscule in comparison to the anthropogenic ones). Basically, they are saying "stay tuned." A lot of papers do that.

Without the politics, Tamarino probably wouldn't have gone so far as to say that the paper shouldn't be published. He probably just would have ignored it as one of many non-compelling results in the literature.

On the other hand, without the politics, I wonder whether Hammel, Lockwood, and others in the editorial chain would have published such a preliminary result. They certainly knew they denialists would pounce on it, and I think that was part of the appeal.

But whatever critiques people offer, they can't deny that the work is an example of the way scientists develop and evaluate hypotheses. The paper presents its data fairly, puts in in context with other work, and presents a possible interpretation that can be tested by further observation.

I offered it here as a counter-example to those people who claim that climate science is held captive by a vast conspiracy, and that those who stray from the party line should fear retribution. Hammel and Lockwood published their findings because they found an interesting question in them. (So do I.) No one is going to threaten their funding because they asked that question.

Fred Bortz
Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com)
and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)

Dave Narby asks:

"Is the brightening of Neptune supposed to confirm or disprove solar caused global warming? It's not clear to me from what you've written."

Dave, my point is that that scientific understanding is always evolving. It's the best we have, but it is never perfect. Yet people who look at things through political lenses tend to overstate things, no matter which side of the issue that they find themselves on. I called attention to the article to demonstrate this evolution of scientific understanding, not to take sides.

In this case, the study gives an interesting suggestion that there may be some solar factors in play that we need to understand. But the authors note that their hypothesis is still tentative. As a scientist, it's the kind of paper I love to read, because it suggests we can learn more by pursuing research in the directions the authors suggest.

In the political battle, however, some people have seized on the abstract of this article to deny anthropogenic contributions to global warming, even though the article explicitly acknowledges them.

On the other side of the political battle, some people have been so strident in their emphasizing of human causes that they make it seem as if science has ruled out all other causes. That's also a distortion.

Note that I am describing political positions not scientific ones here.

In the middle are the scientists who try to keep politics out of their work. They say let's look at everything and try to make sense of it. Their current consensus is very persuasive, and that is that the world is warming and human contributions are, to a high degree of certainty, the dominant cause.

The political point of my posting is that we need to take a less polarized and more honest view of the science in developing policy. We have a global problem to solve, and it appears that human activities are responsible for most of it. Let's consider the consensus view and scenarios on either side of it to formulate policies that are most likely to lead to beneficial changes in way people, corporations, and governments act.

While the policy-makers do their work, the scientists need to continue to illuminate the problem and communicate their findings to society at large.

This paper simply says that we might want to consider some previously undiscovered factors in climate change, even though human causes are dominant. Without the political context, it would get very little attention beyond planetary scientists like Heidi Hammel.

See www.fredbortz.com/HammelBio/ to learn more about her and her work.

And see www.scienceshelf.com/StormWorld.htm to discover an interesting upcoming book that addresses how scientists and their work can be affected by a climate of political polarization.

Fred Bortz
Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com)
and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)