Suggesting that the sun affects the temperature of the earth is sheer heresy. CO2 is the only heat source. It generates so much heat that we could probably run our cars off a hybrid CO2/Al Gore hot air car.

During the 17th century Maunder Minimum, when sunspots were rare, it was also the period of time when the earth's northern hemisphere was sent into what scientists call the "Little Ice Age."

Just a coincidence, nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

This is obviously caused by a decrease in the number of cattle and horses (or Republican members of Congress).

/sarc off

Now, Mr. Bllom. Tell us why changes in solar activity can't possibly effect climate.

Imagine, a scientist that says the Sun warms the earth. What a concept!

since the sun is the drive behind the water cycle and water vapor controls out climate either being rain snow ,dry ,warm,and cold .sounds a lot not to influence climate at all. it has too in some way.

I think the solution is simple.......
Let's sell carbon credits to reduce CO2 on the sun! In fact CO2 is probably the reason why the sun is soooooooooo hot!
We can not only make an international disaster fund but also an inter-planetary fund which we will graciously control and play god with ......errrr I mean dish out as we see fit .......errrr I mean distribute to offset everyones carbon footprint. This way we can help even the people on the dark side of mars re-locate because its suddenly/always too cold or something.
Have we found a way yet to associate earthquakes/volcanoes to AGW? It would be useful to round out the cash grab to include everything!

Fascinating - solar activity may drive Earth's climate!

And real science as well. I have infinitely more confidence in physicists that I do climate scientists.

"...that may counteract man-made greenhouse temperature increases..."

Or, since these may have little or no effect, may be the main driver. Imagine that!

Ever heard of Piers Corbyn, a (in)famous sunspot fanatic over here in the UK? He claims to forecast the weather far in advance by forecasting sunspot activity and correlating this to observed weather patterns.

My limited experience of his forecasts is that they are accurate. He correctly forecast a major North Seas storm on the weekend of November 11, and he also forecast gales last weekend about 6 weeks in advance, which he linked to a solar flare.

He won't submit his techniques to peer review, however, (fair enough - he's got to earn a living I say), and he's often cited in sensationalist weather related headlines, so he gets pilloried as a self publicising fraud, even though his customers are blue chip. Personaly i find it ironic that credible scientists who say we're 50 years from desertifying the planet accuse him of sensationalism, but there we go.....

One thing I do know - if we returned to the weather of the 16th/ 17th century (when crops failed, the Thames often froze, lying snow once fell in London in May and a temperature of -29C was once recorded in Marylebone), we'll find our concern about global warming slightly, erm, ironic....

Do you think we'll ever stop beating around the bush and tell the truth for once? The sun is chiefly responsible for changes in earth's temperatures, not human activity. But of course there's no money to be made, if you accept this truth!

Thanks for the interesting pointer, Brett. A while back, I applied some basic time series modeling techniques to station temperature data, basically for fun. A complete amateur on knowledge about climate, I was still amused to find that at least two time periods corresponding to known weather cycles emerged, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and the ENSO cycle. There was also a cycle with the same period as the sunspot cycle which appeared to influence temperature. This information is another data point that the sunspot cycle effects on temperature may not have been an artifact. Of course, the predictions are presented for entertainment purposes only!

Great, and our PEABRAINED congressmen are busy signing our life away in congress because of their belief in this farse called global warming. Lets see, solar activity had an 8000 year peak at the end of the 20 th century and there is not correlation to warmer than usual temperatures we saw.... or so Gore and his magicians would like you to believe. What a crock.

Well, go to go shove more wood in my exceptionally inefficient wood boiler.

Later

This is encouraging. Then again, sunspots were at record highs around 1960 and the Earth was going through a cooling phase. Solar science is filled with charlatans. Cycle 24 was supposed to be the strongest ever, and now they're saying it won't be.

Our contrarians once again prop up strawmen so that they can heroically knock them down.

Nobody has claimed that the sun doesn't affect the the temperature of the earth. The confirmed theory is that anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 adds to whatever other changes are taking place.

If a change in solar activity causes the earth's temperature to increase, our currently-elevated levels of atmospheric CO2 will amplify that increase. If a change in solar activity causes the earth's temperature to decrease, our currently-elevated levels of atmospheric CO2 will cause the resulting temperature to be warmer than it would otherwise be.

If Whitehouse turns out to be correct, and if it turns out that solar changes delay the impact of our elevated CO2 levels, then I will celebrate the opportunity to take advantage of the extra time to develop and deploy effective long-term solutions to the AGW problem.

As Whitehouse observes in his piece:
It's something we must take seriously because what happened in the 17th century is bound to happen again some time.

Indeed. If a period of solar-induced cooling is "bound to happen again some time", so too is the subsequent period of warming.

We are left with the reality that whatever factor the sun plays, anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 levels amplify the warming effects of the sun. Nothing in this paper challenges that reality.

Sooner or later, humanity must address our impact on our global climate.

The Bali Climate Declaration is out. It has been signed by about 200 scientists. Seven of whom claim to be "climate scientists" in their self-description.
http://www.climate.unsw.edu.au/bali/

30% of the scientists invited to sign, refused.
http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/

Too bad they didn't have the conference in Canada or Antarctica. According to the seven climate scientists who signed up, those regions are supposed to be hit hardest by global warming. Are they afraid to face the bitter cold?

Hot Air Emitted by Climate Summit Equals 20,000 Cars
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601170&refer=home&sid=aPbfclqokwcw

Those who will choose to cling to the silly AGW religon in the coming cooling years will no doubt use the suns low activity as an excuse for the world not burning up with all of the increased CO2. This article already sets them up for that, here we go again with yet another CYA. The rest of the cultist will switch back to the global cooling theory as history has shown us time and again.

Hi Guys,

WOW its not CO2? Why could it be the sun its soooo faarrr away. Will shoot and I was waiting for Bush and Gore to create their Death Star and take over the Third World. Bet you Mark and BT will say its holding off the inevitable warming. What we really need to watch out for is a drastic cooling like the Little Ice Age, you want starvation and devistation, rivers freezing over and not summer. I have been posting this information for months and even noted the lack of sun spots over a month ago and said that if this trend continues it will wipe out the AGW theory that CO2 is the problem. No wonder that the UN and the Ecothiests are pushing to get the Cap and Trade Scam moving and the socialist to tie up the US(The Great Evil). Here is a good piece by Steve Milloy of Junkscience.com

http://www.junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20071129.html
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/Cosmic_rays_and_climate.html

Great post Brett!

Could Solar Inactivity counteract Global Warming?

Ahhh...you think? Thermal absorption is stored internally, in our BIOSPHERE. This is why our planet is warm.

Can you see the water and the earth? Yes. Well then obviously water and earth are absorbing, reflecting and scattering the suns light/color/heat. Can you see a burnt PARTICLE of carbon in our atmosphere? No. What about .0375 burnt particles of carbon in our atmosphere? Nope, I still cant see the particles, even though they are surrounding me. (Microscopic) .0375 carbon has insignificant thermal properties.

Here is the nail in the coffin to carbon causing global warming. Any significant build up of carbon (a cloud or visible layer of carbon) in our atmosphere, would have a COOLING effect on our biosphere. Volcanos spewing CARBON PARTICLES into the atmosphere. A meteor slamming into our biosphere, causing PARTICLES to become airborn and reducing (partially absorbing, reflecting and scattering) the suns energy before it reaches our biosphere. These ATMOSPHERIC PARTICLES is what lead to the Ice Ages to begin with. This is not to say that an increase of .011 atmospheric carbon is going to lead us into another ice age. MICROSCOPIC!

The GW debate is over folks.

The best part of the story if the title "Ray of hope: Can the sun save us from global warming?". Everyone is in such a mindset that CO2 is the culprit, that we ignore the big ball of fire that heats our planet. The sun is the cause of global warming.

If the author is correct, then CO2 caused global warming may save us from a disastrous cold spell.

Also interesting that despite the overwhelming evidence that a lack of sunspots has caused very cold periods in the past, the IPCC consistently underplays their importance in future calculations.

Lots of early snow in the Swiss Alps. Last year people were saying that it would never snow again.

Interesting prediction. How, if the TSI is only about 0.1% lower at sunspot maxima than at minima, will this result in a 1.5degC cooling? Even during grand minima the global average temp anomaly was only about 0.5degC cooler compared to grand maxima and these fluctuations occurred over a period of many decades. There is no doubt that solar fluctuations are a forcing in the Earth's climate and nobody disputes this, but such predictions as "1.5degC cooling by 2020" are based on no known mechanism. It would be more informative to offer the assumptions, models, and scenarios used in these predictions, but Abdusamatov at the RAS has never made his model for predicting climate variation from sunspot activity public.
And as usual, Paul and Patrick misunderstand everything about the attribution of climate change to various forcings.

You should know better
The sun has no effect on climate
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/Conf2007/Archibald2007.pdf
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg

Patrick - did you miss this statement about why some of the 30% refused to sign? "According to Andrew Pitman, a climate scientist also at the University of New South Wales, Australia, some authors didn�t sign because they felt the emissions cuts called for were simply not tough enough." Or did you just ignore it?

Hi Pete,

You are making the argument that TSI fluctuation is too small to have much of an impact on climate.

So please enlighten us as to what caused the LIA, which coincidentally corresponded to a sunspot minimum.

Are you looking forward to those sub -80F temperatures forecast for Greenland this Sunday? And BTW - worldwide sea ice is back to the 30 year mean. Everyone listening to Gore & Hansen knows that the polar ice caps are "melting at an unprecedented rate."
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=72.58000183,-38.45000076

Pete Desanto,

Because there is a lot more to the sun than TSI. Why don't you do some research smart guy. Read papers by Arcibald, Svensmaark, Haigh, Scafetta, West, Fairbridge, Labitzke and Shindell, just to name a few off the top of my head.

And for papers which show CO2 has already caused all the warming it can for the present ppm, and doubling current levels will only contribute, perhaps, another 1 K, refer to papers by Schwartz, Evans and Archibald.

BT - "We are left with the reality that whatever factor the sun plays, anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 levels amplify the warming effects of the sun. Nothing in this paper challenges that reality. Sooner or later, humanity must address our impact on our global climate."

Take special note of the CO2 papers (authors) referenced.

Sorry to both of you - I don't have time to find you links to the specifics, but you both seem to have plenty of time on your hands, and I'm sure you're quite capable of finding them on your own. . . Assuming you're willing to be enlightened.

By the way BT, this is a big switch for you, all we've ever heard from you to date is that the sun has already been debunked as a GW cause; TSI, Milankovitch cycles, cosmic rays - all "proven" to be non-factors in present day Global Warming, but now you're willing to concede that there could be a cooling, and if there is a cooling it will buy us some time to address CO2. How interesting of you...........

The fact of the matter is that IF there is a big drop in SC24 & 25, AND there is a significant cooling coincident with the less active sun - It will be incontrovertible proof that the 20th century warming was indeed the result of the most active solar cycles in the past 8000 years, and proof that there was no CO2 induced warming or none that was in any way significant. It will be Case Closed !

now, lets just see if this story gets any national press like every little blurb saying the world is going to end from AGW.

just for fun, lets apply the AGW type hysteria to potential global cooling:

-global cooling will cause mass starvation due to a shortening of the growing season worldwide

-northern deer populations in danger from increasing polar bear predation

-first world countries should give trillions to third world nations to subsidize programs to protect them from the coming environmental devastations due to global cooling

-falling global sea level will alter fish populations, devastating the fishing industry

-millionaire's homes will no longer be on the beach, they will be (gasp) farther inland!

thus is the ridiculousness of the AGW hysteria. the earth changes, and not every little alteration, real or artificial, will be catastrophic.

OK, Let's go with this. When the sun spots come back it's going to get colder on earth. That means longer winters and colder weather. That means more oil and gas to heat the homes in the north, speeding the down slope of peak oil and adding CO2 to the atmosphere. And longer, colder winters mean a shorter growing season, which means more pressure on food supplies as the population grows. Hmmm, yeah I guess there is really nothing to worry about; I'm sure you'll have it covered!

sunspots were at record highs around 1960 and the Earth was going through a cooling phase. Solar science is filled with charlatans.

Mark - It's not sunspots or the lack of them that directly determine warming or cooling, respectively. It's the associated faculae, i.e., bright/hot spots that are harder to count than sunspots. But when sunspots are virtually totally absent, as in the Maunder Minimum, then so are faculae, and it gets downright cold. But that requires a solar effect to be added to negative feedbacks.

Cycle 24 was supposed to be the strongest ever, and now they're saying it won't be.

Some people realize they need to revise their theories, admit it, and then do so. A good lesson, that.

On a different train of thought, I again celebrate the possibility that certain theories will have their day. Not only those of the solar physicists, but also theories of negative feedback playing off of reduced solar activity. I specifically have in mind Svensmark's proposal that lower solar magnetic activity (if i