Sallie Baliunas

Sallie Baliunas is at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/) in the Solar, Stellar, and Planetary Sciences Division (http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/ssp/) and formerly Deputy Director of the Mount Wilson Institute (http://www.mtwilson.edu/).

Baliunas is primarily an astrophysicist and this is where the bulk of her research has been done (e.g. [1] (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/journal/issues/ApJL/v474n2/5583/5583.html)). She studies visible and ultraviolet spectroscopy of stars; structure, variations, and activity in cool stars; evolution of stellar angular momentum; solar variability and global change; adaptive optics; exoplanets of Sun-like stars.

Contents

1 Global Warming and solar variability 2 Ozone depletion 3 Positions and awards 4 External links

Global Warming and solar variability

In 1992, Baliunas was third author on a Nature paper [2] (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?1992Natur.360..653L) that used observed variations in sun-like stars as an analogue of possible past variations in the Sun. The paper says that

"the sun is in an unusually steady phase compared to similar stars, which means that reconstructing the past historical brightness record may be more risky than has been generally thought".

More recently she has moved into the global warming area as a skeptic.

Baliunas is a strong disbeliever in a connection between CO2 rise and climate change, saying:

But is it possible that the particular temperature increase observed in the last 100 years is the result of carbon dioxide produced by human activities? The scientific evidence clearly indicates that this is not the case. All climate studies agree that if the one-degree [Fahrenheit] global warming was produced by an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the additional CO2 first warms the atmosphere, and the warmed atmosphere, in turn, warms the earth’s surface. However, measurements of atmospheric temperatures made by instruments lofted in satellites and balloons show that no warming has occurred in the atmosphere in the last 50 years. This is just the period in which human-made carbon dioxide has been pouring into the atmosphere and according to the climate studies, the resultant atmospheric warming should be clearly evident [3] (http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/90.pdf).

However, satellite measurements, which extend back for the past 25 years, show warming; and balloon measurements over the last 50 years also show warming [4] (http://www.met-office.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/CR_data/Monthly/upper_air_temps.gif) (see satellite temperature record).

Although the work of Willie Soon and Baliunas, suggesting that solar variability is more strongly correlated with variations in air temperature than any other factor, even carbon dioxide levels, is trumpeted by the Marshall Institute, Tech central station [5] (http://www.techcentralstation.com/081604C.html) and SEPP [6] (http://www.sepp.org/NewSEPP/Testimony-baliunas.htm) [7] (http://www.marshall.org/experts.php?id=38) and mentioned in the popular press [8] (http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=478) and in IPCC reports [9] (http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/259.htm) on global warming, nevertheless her viewpoint - that solar variation accounts for most of the recent climate change - is not widely accepted.

With Soon, Dr. Baliunas investigated the correlation between solar variation and temperatures of the earth's atmosphere. When there are more sunspots, the total solar output increases, and when there are fewer sunspots, it decreases. Soon and Baliunas attribute the Medieval warm period to such an increase in solar output, and believe that decreases in solar output led to the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling from which the earth has been recovering since 1890.

In 2003, Baliunas and Soon published a paper which reviewed a number of previous scientific papers and came to the conclusion that the climate hasn't changed in the last 2000 years. However, 13 of the authors of the papers Baliunas and Soon cited refuted her interpretation of their work, and several editors of "Climate Research", the journal which published the paper, resigned in protest at a flawed peer review process which allowed the publication.

Baliunas' extra-academic positions at several think tanks funded by energy industry organizations such as The American Petroleum Institute are often cited by her opponents as a source of bias on her part.

Ozone depletion

Baliunas earlier adopted a sceptical position regarding the hypothesis that CFCs were damaging to the ozone layer, which earned its originators, Rowland and Molina, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1995. Her arguments on this issue, presented to Congressional hearings held in 1995 (but before the Nobel prize announcement), were broadly similar in form to those she presented at the same time, and has maintained subsequently, with respect to global warming.

Positions and awards

Dr. Baliunas serves as Senior Scientist at the George C. Marshall Institute in Washington, DC, and chairs the Institute's Science Advisory Board. She is also Visiting Professor at Brigham Young University, Adjunct Professor at Tennessee State University and past contributing editor to the World Climate Report. Her awards include the Newton Lacey Pierce Prize in Astronomy by the American Astronomical Society, the Petr Beckmann Award for Scientific Freedom and the Bok Prize from Harvard University. In 1991 Discover magazine profiled her as one of America's outstanding women scientists. She received her M.A. (1975) and Ph.D. (1980) degrees in Astrophysics from Harvard University.

External links

• Google Scholar: Sallie Baliunas (http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sallie+baliunas&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en)
• Testimony of March 13, 2002 by Dr Sallie Baliunas provided to the Senate, from the SEPP site (http://www.sepp.org/NewSEPP/Testimony-baliunas.htm), or direct (http://epw.senate.gov/107th/Baliunas_031302.htm).
• Entry for Sallie Baliunas on Sourcewatch (http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=Sallie_L._Baliunas)
• [10] (http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=3)
• [11] (http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/)
• [12] (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_n5_v30/ai_21141905)
• work bio (http://www.cirs.net/investigadores/Astronomy/BALIUNAS.htm)
• Lecture on solar variability vs. carbon dioxide as a source of "global warming" (http://www.byui.edu/Ricks/employee/DAVISR/202/GlobalWarming2.htm)
• links to select works (http://www.marshall.org/experts.php?id=38) - compiled by the Marshall Institute