Wow! The IPCC says it so it has to be a fact. Yes, in 20-30 years I'll be sitting on some ocean front property here in the Appalachians, off in the distance I will see the sea. They see this theory affected cloudiness but they don't think that factors into warmth. Go outside on a cool partly cloudy day, cloud goes over its cool, sun comes out its warm. I did that experiment and I am not even a scientist. One time these people say global warming will cause more precip, then they will say drought, put it plain and simple these people have no clue what they are talking about. I bet they have the explanations of past ice ages and climate changes.

Another wonderful case of AGW theoreticians ignoring the empirical historical record, in favor of their own lack of understanding.

In 1801, the eminent British astronomer (William Herschel) reported that when sunspots dotted the sun's surface, grain prices fell. When sunspots waned, prices rose.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0927/p13s03-sten.html

Europe's so-called "Little Ice Age" (1645-1715) coincided with the Maunder Minimum
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf051/sf051a05.htm

Something interesting I've noticed from COLA over the past few months is that most of the world's tall mountain ranges are running much below normal temperatures. This is particularly apparent in the Himalayas which were surrounded by anomalous warmth last month, yet the mountains themselves were 10 degrees below normal.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/clim.html

Here in Colorado it has been amazing how few days we have been able to see the mountains. This is an area noted for exceptional sunshine, yet clouds have shrouded the mountains almost continuously since November. Something unusual is going on in the atmosphere above 10,000 feet

Is this current events?

This is very curious as this same Terry Sloan had a paper published, nearly identical, on the link below back in June 2007:

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/07/no-link-between.html

The correlation between solar activity and global temp is too strong to ignore whereas the correlation between CO2 and temp is almost non existent. In fact there have been times when the CO2 has been more than 10x current levels with no effect on temp! Ergo there is some as yet unexplained more powerful factor in global temps.

But the problem is really with the computer models: plug 3000ppm (not the 300ppm of present) into the Schmidt/Hansen/NASA GCM models and the earth goes into meltdown. But the salient point is IT DIDN'T happen so the models are wrong!

For a somewhat different take on the case for global warming as a function of cosmic ray interference, search the archive at Discover Magazine for 'Sun's Shifts May Cause Global Warming'.

The people doing research on this have found something interesting and are pursuing it - it's a work in progress. The only aspect of this I find depressing is the general willingness, even within the scientific community, to debunk or ridicule or attempt to disprove research which is ongoing and incomplete. Or the tendency to politicize what is in fact a legitimate scientific inquiry.

I think a better question to ask is then WHY has the planet been COOLING since 1998? This is another of my typical "according to AGW theory this should not be happening" points.

also another interesting article:
http://discovermagazine.com/2003/aug/breakhot/

This is a no brainer. If they reported a link funding would dry up immediately. The whole premise is of a belief that it is something we can control. I don't believe anyone has come out with a way we can control the sun as of yet. If someone does then it will be open season on the sun after all as the reason for GW. It is all about the money.

Also, it is curious, on the 'Wired' link I noted, there is exactly 409 top stories on global warming and exactly 3 on skepticism, and none of the 3 actually address skepticism per se.

One of the favorites of the Hysterics is that the Global Cooling scenario back in the 60-s and 70's were the perpetuation of just a few climatologists while the majority disagreed and 'proved' it wrong. If is was so few, then why did Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warn of "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation." Science Digest (February 1973) reported that "the world's climatologists are agreed" that we must "prepare for the next ice age."

These same magazines are now pipping a different tune.

Can't we get around to the REAL problems in the world like, the end of cheap oil, collapsing ocean
ecosystems, the coming water crisis, deforestation, and nuclear weapons those 'buried' and those in development by rouge nations.

Trying to discredit solar radiation is NOTHING new, it's been going on for years, but we have to see a 'study' every year or so to remind people of how erroneous this perception is and has been 'discredited'.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm

The bottom line is still with the problems with data manipulation, model creation and programmings.

Cosmic rays can be gamma rays, i.e., all photons more energetic than x-rays or atomic nuclei, from protons up.
In any case the class, cosmic ray, is open-ended and Sloan is apparently looking at higher energies than Svensmark. Watts has comments in this in a couple threads.

"leading to global global warming."

Brett's not getting enough sleep now that the baby is home. :-)

Reply: You are right about that! 3 hours last night, but she is so cute with her eyes open, even at 3:30 in the morning!

Can't folllow the links here at work, but this seems to be limited. He only checked its influence on clouds? What about amount of heat/radiation it sends out during more solar activity?

Kind of overlooking a bit to prove the carbon crap isn't it?

Uh, Steve, would you please find and paste the original quote from the December 1976 piece that paraphrase?

I'll do it for you if you prefer, but you'll preserve more of your own credibility if you take the step yourself. I'll wait until we've all seen it to pursue the question of whether or not your paraphrase accurately reflects the original quote.

Good evening ladies and gentleman tonight here on the Late Show in my right hand I have a copy of tonights top ten list, tonights top ten. Top ten signs the sun no longer affects the earth:

Number 10-Al Gore says so
Number 9 -Dr Koverkian, wait thats Dr Svensmark says the sun is out of heat
Number 8 -More people growing their money crops indoors {thats been happening here in the city for awhile Paul}
Number 7 -All the carbon dioxide blocks it out
Number 6 -All the white snow cover reflects it back to space
Number 5 -Its colder now than it has been for years
Number 4 -The flat earth people started making potato chips and stopped worrying about the weather
Number 3 -Something for us to argue over
Number 2 -It decided to melt the ice caps on Mars and is leaving us alone
The Number one sign that the sun no longer affects the earth is: Al Gore put solar panels on his house
Coming up next we got stupid human tricks..Would everybody please welcome the group IPCC......

Filibustering.. Maybe some climate change skeptics did say there was a Sun/Climate Change Link and maybe they were right or wrong, but the big issue is the Bureaucrat/Climate Change Link.. and all those nice subsidies they can use to control us with............

Hi Guys,

We should really get all sides to the story.

Here�s the reply from Svensmark.
http://www.spacecenter.dk/publications/scientific-report-series/Scient_No._3.pdf
Here�s another from Ken Gregory
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/evidence-of-a-significant-solar-imprint-in-annual-globally-
and here�s another from Anthony Watts.
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/evidence-of-a-significant-solar-imprint-in-annual-globally-averaged-temperature-trends-part-2/

Reply: Thanks Jim.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2961#comment-232584
This could another of those very important pointers that AGW aint happening. It seems CO2 is now falling
(with a large grain of salt, just preliminary data but it appears to be trendy)

BT,

This is off topic, but I thought you might find this article interesting. I came across it on the London Times.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article673663.ece

This all reminds me of the medical school professor who told his students, "In ten years half of what I teach you will be obsolete and I don't know which half." Dr. Semmelweis who told doctors they were spreading infection and ought to wash their hands before examining patients died impovrished and ignored. The first doctor to use anesthetic for an operation was a dentist not a surgeon. The person who had the bright idea of using "laughing gas" to prevent pain couldn't get a surgeon to try the ridiculous idea. They laughed at the man who said scurvy could be prevented by eating citrus fruit. Much more recently, they laughed at the idea that ulcers are caused by bacteria. Everyone "knew" that bacteria can't live in stomach acids. And malaria was long thought to be caused by "bad night air". Sorry all my examples are medical. I know more about that subject.
Point is, anyone who says "the science is settled" is ignorant of history.

BS. Pure bs. Go ahead and coddle Mr. Gore. He'll squeeze you dry and never stop smiling through the process. Go ahead. What do you care?

Does anyone else notice the tone of the article?
It reads like a propaganda statement.
�the IPCC has got it right. "So we had better carry on trying to cut carbon emissions," says Sloan.�
This study was never intended to find the truth, it was intended to deflect attention away from anything that might cause doubt in established doctrine.
The Church has mastered this tact over centuries of �protecting the faith�.

These two links offer good insights:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/sppi_reprint_series/a_critique_on_the_lockwood_frochlich_paper_in_the_royal_society_proceedings.html
and
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/evidence-of-a-significant-solar-imprint-in-annual-globally-averaged-temperature-trends-part-2/

The bottom line is that the correlation between temperatures and solar activity is very strong and the correlation to CO2 is weak at best.
But you can�t tax people because of the sun.

Steve Rowland:
On global cooling, The AGW industry has been trying desperately to bury that story for 20 years. It�s a major embarrassment to them. They have several pseudo studies to show it was only a few rouges that bought into it.
Anyone old enough to have lived through it however knows different.

How Low can the BBC go?

BBC censors Harrabin

Roger Harrabin is one of the less ideological reporters for the BBC and he sometimes mentions things that call global warming into question. But that does not suit the British Bias Corporation of course. In this article, Harrabin mentioned recent global cooling. But when someone senior to him saw it, they were obviously not happy. The article was changed after it initially appeared.

I have a PDF of the article produced shortly after it was posted. I also have a PDF of what was up last time I checked. Let us compare the 3rd/4th sentences in each. In V1, they say:

'This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory. But experts say we are still clearly in a long-term warming trend - and they forecast a new record high temperature within five years.'

In V2 they say:

'But this year's temperature would still be way above the average - and we would soon exceed the record year of 1998 because of global warming induced by greenhouse gases.'

How low the BBC has sunk from the grand old days of Lord Reith when it could be relied on as a source of objective and unbiased information! The Left corrupt anything they get their hands on. As Orwell pointed out, they think that truth is what they declare it to be.

I did my own research based on observed solar radiation and temperature data collected in Germany during the period from 1964-1990.

The first attachment shows the solar radiation data for eight stations in Germany (1964-1990):

http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=display-figures&name=i1520-0442-10-9-2391-f02

The second attachment shows the solar radiation data for Humburg, Germany (1964-1990) under overcast conditions (which occur 26% of the time):

http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=display-figures&name=i1520-0442-10-9-2391-f03

The third attachment shows the GISS Temperature data for Hamburg (1951-2008):

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=617101470001&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

I couldn't find temperature data for the other five stations). While the reported solar radiation data for overcast conditions (which occurs 90% of the time at this station) appears to have decreased about 19 W/m2 over the 1964-1990 period, the corresponding temperatures appears to have increased by about 1C.

The main report that the solar radiation data comes from is attached below if you wish to review it:

http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0442(1997)010%3C2391%3ADIGSRW%3E2.0.CO%3B2&ct=1#I1520-0442-10-9-2391-LIEPERT1

This simple comparison record (admitedly for only one station) shows that there does not appear to be any correlation with solar radiation and temperatures. Whether or not this is true everywhere needs to be evaluated.

My whole point in doing this is show that you can't just assume that increased solar irradiance automatically results increased temperatures. Obviously there are other factors coming into play here and any effort to try to correlate anything with just one variable will lead you into problems with your conclusions.

Sometimes the time frames being used for the comparison may not be giving the true picture. There are other potential complex factors that appear to be affecting the temperature oscillation curve in the shorter-time frames. Those that say there is no correlation of temperatures and CO2 are basing it on one-to-one correspondence on a yearly basis (temperatures going up and down) while CO2 is simply going straight up, fail to look at the bigger picture. Is there something going on in the longer-term, decade-to-decade time frame that can be reviewed to provide a more direct correlation of the data variables? Just throwing that out there for your consideration.

Hi Dennis Hlinka,

The interactions between the sun and earth are much more complex than TSI. There is also the solar wind and the effects of the sun's and earth's magnetic field.

You are making the same mistake as the authors of the paper. There is also the thermal buffering effects of the ocean which cause a temperature lag.

Gary,

That is scary about the BBC. I saw that article when it first appeared, and even congratulated Richard Black at the BBC about their rare moment of objectivity.

When a government sponsored news service decides to back a line of propaganda, nothing good can come of it.

VG,

I noticed that too. The link to the Mauna Loa observations is:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

Every winter since observations began, the CO2 levels reached during winter has broken the record set the previous winter. Then the CO2 levels drop, as the vegetation over the large NH land mass gets busy and consumes a lot of CO2. Or that's the reason I've heard.

In most texts the reason given for the CO2 rise during the winter is that humans in the NH are burning tons of oil and coal to stay warm. I expected quite a rise this winter, as it was colder than normal, and a billion shivering people in China have been burning more coal to stay warm. There are 2 months to go, but the fact the rise appears to be leveling off, and may fail to reach the levels of last year's, astonishes me. After all, I was expecting a major spike.

This would be the first time since records began being kept in 1959 that CO2 levels failed to break the prior year's record. In effect, it would hint CO2 levels are actually dropping.

Can you imagine the sensation the headline, "Global CO2 Dropping," would generate?

(Of course, this is only preliminary data, and NOAA has been know to "adjust" data. Keep an eye on Realclimate for future news of the need of this sort of adjustment.)

This is likely going to be a fairly decent summer for vegetation in the NH, despite the lack of sunspots perhaps indicating less solar irradecence. Vegetation will thrive because the atmosphere is very clean and free of volcanic ash. Already RSS data shows NH temps rebounding nicely. If this vegetation gobbles up CO2 to a degree where CO2 levels dip below last summer's lowest point, expect an uproar. (And right before the election, too.)

And this doesn't even include Svenmark's ideas about cosmic rays causing low cloud cover to cool us more during low points in the sun-spot cycle, and the fact the next sun-spot cycle is refusing to obey NASA, and to begin when they say it should. (NASA has hurt the sun's feelings by saying a SUV matters, and a SUN doesn't, so it will be darned if it will make any spots for them.)

(I stuck that paragraph in to try to get back to the subject of this thread.)

Brett, I think the Mauna Loa data would make a good subject for a future post.

Dr. Hansen warns that we need to cut CO2 levels by 30 ppm, or global warming will destroy humanity.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/07/climatechange.carbonemissions

Unlike most of Hansen's unverifiable long term claims, in this case we already have data to examine. The last ten years have been above 350ppm and temperatures have been declining.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/climon/data/themi/g17.htm
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/ipcc_ar4_and_trend.jpg

Even worse than the air temperatures, ocean heat content is declining - which negates the other half of his claim.

Junk science and junk journalism at it's worst. It is embarrassing that this guy represents our country's scientific community. No one will trust scientists for a generation after this madness ends.

I also found another Journal of Climate report published back in 1997 that discusses the correlations of solar irradiance with observed world temperatures from the 1600's to the late 1990's:

http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0442(1998)011%3C3069%3ACFBCSR%3E2.0.CO%3B2#I1520-0442-11-12-3069-F13

The report concluded the following in it's abstract:

"The correlation of reconstructed solar irradiance and Northern Hemisphere (NH) surface temperature anomalies is 0.86 in the pre-industrial period from 1610 to 1800, implying a predominant solar influence. Extending this correlation to the present suggests that solar forcing may have contributed about half of the observed 0.55�C surface warming since 1900 and one-third of the warming since 1970."

The fact that the correlation of solar radiation to temperature data appears to be decreasing over time, in particular during the post-industrial period of the 1900's, seems to put the natural versus "other influences" into clearer perspective.

Again this is not saying that the natural variation of solar radiation and temperatures has been eliminated, it just states that the natural changes are being altered or overwritten by some other force. The result being some combined effect of multiple variables that are starting to diminish the true natural variation of the original correlation.

"We tried to corroborate Svensmark's hypothesis, but we could not; as far as we can see, he has no reason to challenge the IPCC - the IPCC has got it right."

REPLY: "Now give me my over inflated IPCC paycheck!"

Top ten signs the sun no longer affects the earth

Another crisp example of a contrarian lie.

No climatologist claims that the sun doesn't affect the earth. The assertion that Josh is apparently attempting to dispute is the observation that changes in the sun are not correlated to changes in the earth's temperature. The changes in the sun's behavior therefore do not explain the observed increase in the earth's global surface temperature.

Instead of tackling the more challenging task of disputing the theory or data that climatologists actually present (such as in the thread-starter), Josh prefers to instead take cheap-shots by attempting to ridicule them for what they do NOT say.

The aspect of this dishonesty that never ceases to amaze me is why contrarians continue to present these flagrant lies. The fact that they continue to trot out this stale propaganda (this is worse than listening to out-takes of Rush Limbaugh!) seems to confirm that they have no scientific case whatsoever.

After all, if they had any science to support them, surely they would cite it.

Global warming hits the UK spring, again.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7333310.stm

Hansen's at it again:

Earth in crisis, warns NASA's top climate scientist

Global warming has plunged the planet into a crisis and the fossil fuel industries are trying to hide the extent of the problem from the public, NASA's top climate scientist says.

Evil big oil is at it again. It looks as though the good Dr. Hansen is in a game of oneupmanship with Dr. Gore.

There, did you see it? He's being censored again.

The irony of the study's headlines seem to be lost by many. Surely the authors do not suggest that if the sun were to go out, CO2 would be more than enough to compensate for the lack of sunlight?

As I am sure, most people noticed the brief time of the study (22 years), or the duration of Solar Cycle 22. This is akin to a researcher attempting to study snow patterns in North Dakota during the month of August. The 11 year solar cycles themselves are part of a longer, much longer 400 year Gliessberg Cycle. It is during the negative phase of the Gliessberg Oscillation that the Dr Svensmark's theories should be tested. The last negative phase of the Gliessbrg Oscillation ended about 187 years ago. During the last negative phase, the Maunder, and Dalton Minimums occurred. Within a decade I think many questions about AGW will be answered.

I sent in a much more detailed post yesterday after being challenged by BT. It was not posted, but I am not going to let it go.

Pursuant to my post above, I did not 'paraphrase' the article. That was uses for at least a half dozen blogs on their captioned post at the time and in those words.

This is old news though, and has been run the gamut ad nausea m.

The Full text of the quote is "A model of future 'climate based on the observed orbital-climate relationships, but ignoring anthropogenic effects, predicts that the long-term trend over the next seven thousand years is toward extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation."

The 'anthropogenic effects' mean nothing to me as there have been no such effects documented that hold up under opposition analysis. The so-called AGW 'cure' such alleged effects will have a drastic effect life on this planet, especially the third world, so such 'effects' must be shown to be conclusive before being accepted by the majority of constituents.

If it is being suggested that there was enough 'anthropogenic effects' a few years after the above quote occurred to change from 'cooling' to 'warming' is simply disingenuous.

George Will wrote a Skeptical column at the time using basically the same 'paraphrase' and was accused by AGW proponents of being a 'liar' by omission.

If the intent of BT's post was to suggest that I am lacking in credibility, I take exception to that, and would ask if my fellow posters feel the same way BT does to drop me a line. At the very least according to BT, I can now join the Patrick Henry AccuWeather Club of Liars.

From ICECAP:

http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=153

Excerpt:April 4th, 2008 by Warwick Hughes

Here is a recent email headed �Black Propaganda continues at the BBC� from JohnA informing Richard Black of the BBC about the degree of bias in BBC reporting on climate issues.

(Can I just add here my humble effort �Exactly where Lockwood and Fr�hlich are wrong� ?)

Richard,

I note your latest attempt in your continuing campaign to ignore and demean the considerable and growing evidence of natural influences on climate change, and especially on the cosmic ray/solar cycle hypothesis of Svensmark et al.

Last time you raced out of the blocks with an article entitled �No Sun link� to climate change� about a paper then yet to be published, and couldn�t be bothered beyond leaving a few voicemail messages to contact Dr Svensmark for a response. The paper of course was by Lockwood and Froelich:

Then of course, you didn�t bother reporting that reply from Svensmark because we don�t want the license payers unnecessarily confused with a solid rebuttal, would we Richard? Especially since that paper by Lockwood that you trumpeted was rife with errors.

Here�s the reply from Svensmark
Here�s another from Ken Gregory and here�s another from Anthony Watts

Obviously you won�t spend any time reporting on them, because life�s too short isn�t it Richard? After all, what with burning up all of those carbon credits to visit glaciers calving perfectly naturally, and polar bear populations stridently not declining but growing strongly, there�s no time for nuanced scientific reporting is there?

Now we have yet another example of your tawdry one-sided reporting with this one: �No Sun link� to climate change� (by the way, are you minimizing your carbon footprint by recycling the titles to articles?). This time its a letter to a little known and little read environmental science journal - so we�re a long way from any expertise in statistics or solar science, aren�t we?

This time the two scientists are Sloan and Wolfendale, and would you believe it! They come to the same conclusion as the one you want to hear! I�m not a betting man but if I was, I�d bet they contacted you about their forthcoming letter and you got some nice juicy �colour quotes� to pad it out to justify your BBC salary and the rest is history!

Nobody cares, because nobody checks anything!

Except that even Sloan and Wolfendale don�t show that there is ��No Sun link� to climate change�, they say that even with their limited analysis of 20 some years, the Svensmark process on its own contributed perhaps 25% of the warming. That�s not insignificant.

That�s not �no link�, that�s �some link� Richard. Even this limited analysis showed some connection between the Svensmark process and global climate......

the e-mail is of some length...

Patrick Henry,

Your response confuses me and maybe you can explain your logic about the lag time to me.

The data I presented shows a decreasing solar radiation curve while the temperatures are increasing. If I am to understand you, a lag time is occurring and is skewing the results. If the temperature data is lagging that wouldn't make sense since the time period of my curves are from the 1960's to 1990's. The 1950's and 1960's were cooler and any lag would mean that temperatures should be decreasing because the relatively cooler oceans from the earlier time period would still be effecting the temperatures through the 1980's into the 1990's. But the fact that the temperature were increasing opposes that argument.

Also it would be nice if you could define your periods of lag time and provide some measured data to support your statements. I could always try to find some lag time on any data comparison study with initial poor correlations just to make them look better or appear worse (if that is your intention).

'No Sun link' to climate change

I suspect the BBC article's ludicrous headline( probably not the author's) was just to grab people's attention; after all "Cosmic ray link to cloud formation questioned" would not garner many page downloads, apart from from "our" PH that is.

Came across this:

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/environment/i'll-be-just-fine%2c-says-planet-20080306774/

Made me chuckle.

Of course the sun has no role in the earth's climate. We could do without it all together. Wow its scary that these are scientists with degrees!

Patrick Henry,

As a follow-up to my question on lag time that you use in your arguments, I am attaching two plots.

The first one is the plot of sunspot activity for the period of 1600-2005, which has been used as a proxy for solar radiation:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Sunspot_Numbers.png/800px-Sunspot_Numbers.png

The second one is the CRU temperature plot for the period 1850 to 2008:

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/climon/data/themi/g17.gif

If there is a laq between solar radiation and world temperature, the time scale seems highly variable in identifying any firm lag time. If the lag time is highly variable then any data correlation is diminished.

For example, the period around 1830-1850 showed a peak in sunspots with a decrease in sunspots from 1850 to 1900. Looking at the CRU temperature plot indicates a similar decrease in temperature to a minimum in the early 1900's. With the minimum of sunpot activity in the early 1900's, lag would mean that the peak in the 1930's should not have occured. If you want to assume that the previous sunspot peak in around 1840 caused the temperature peak in the 1930's, that would mean a lag time of 90 years.

The modern maximum sunpot peaked around the 1950-1960 period when there was a secondary minimum of worldwide temperatures. Using this the lag time from the sunspot minimum to the temperature minimum is 50 years. Meanwhile as the sunspot activity has basically become rangebound since 1950 in a generally flat pattern, worldwide temperatures have generally increased. Again you have to assume a 50 year lag time to relate to the peak in worldwide temperatures.

My whole point is the lag time seem to use to support your arguments seems to be a too highly variable in length. Is it 90 years, 50 years, 30 years? You can pick and choose any time to try to improve your correlation and that makes your assumptions questionable.

its amazing how any scientist could support the make-believe, teleconnection-feedback-co2 voodoo scam in the face of ole Sol's recent output and temperature correlation...or is it more important to these dudes their melon patch is in dire need of some co2-funded fertilizer?....have a nice day bros

BBC in serious trouble re: earth cooling statement
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002906.html

In a comment on this thread yesterday, Steve Rowland wrote:
One of the favorites of the Hysterics is that the Global Cooling scenario back in the 60-s and 70's were the perpetuation of just a few climatologists while the majority disagreed and 'proved' it wrong. If is was so few, then why did Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warn of "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation." Science Digest (February 1973) reported that "the world's climatologists are agreed" that we must "prepare for the next ice age." (emphasis mine)

I invited Steve to check his sources, and he apparently hasn't had a chance to follow up.

I believe the Science piece he refers to is Variations in the Earth's Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages, in the 10-Dec-1976 issue that Steve cites.

Here is the relevant piece of the abstract paraphrased in Steve's comment:
A model of future climate based on the observed orbital-climate relationships, but ignoring anthropogenic effects, predicts that the long-term trend over the next sevem (sic) thousand years is toward extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation. (emphasis mine)

Let's just do the instant replay on the parts I highlighted:

but ignoring anthropogenic effects, and
over the next seven thousand years

I hope that Steve will agree that his attempt to paraphrase this abstract is not only inaccurate, but in fact turns the meaning of the original on its ear. Hays et al certainly DID NOT predict any immediate "ice age" in this piece.

I'm reasonably sure that Steve didn't, himself, look at this abstract and decide to misquote it. Somebody, however, did lift this phrase out of context and publish it to the contrarian blogosphere. It strains credulity to assert that the original misquote was anything but a flagrant and intentional lie.

In fact, this particular misquote is now widely published within the contrarian blogosphere, and is an excellent illustration of how easily a lie circulates. If it were not countered, the lie would be amplified by its presence on this thread on THIS very blog.

This is why it is so despicable for people, including people here, to knowingly repeat such lies, and why it is so important for lies such as this to be corrected when they appear.

Surely this discussion is more meaningful if all of us hold ourselves to some reasonable standard of honesty.

I have a column up on the washingtonpost.com regarding Joe Bastardi's recent statements on global climate change, it has some relevancy to the cosmic rays issue as well.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2008/04/freedman_gore_serves_accuweath.html

-Andrew

VG - if you go up a few comments you will see a nice graph of CO2 levels. How can you say that CO2 levels are dropping?

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2961#comment-232584
VG says:
"This could another of those very important pointers that AGW ain't happening. It seems CO2 is now falling(with a large grain of salt, just preliminary data but it appears to be trendy")

We can end the nonsense about Antarctica cooling. 20 years of data in a nice graph.

http://earthobservatory.
nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17838

Hi Dennis Hlinka,

As long as incoming heat is greater than outgoing heat, the ocean temperature will rise - and vice versa.

You can't look at the sunspot information alone and ascertain which direction ocean temperatures should be moving.

Andrew:
Your said: But should the reputation of climate science be the victim?

Climate science now has a reputation for rampant errors, wild exaggeration, false proclamations, fudging data, bad instrumentation, and stead fast adherence to doctrine in the face of opposing research.
Science IS the main victim.

Hi gettingcold,

Nice Antarctica link. Now please explain why NASA altered their data last year from their previous map - which showed Antarctica in a strong cooling trend.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/antarctic_temps.AVH1982-2004.jpg

Politics perhaps? Certainly not science.

Well we got our electric bill for our business today for the month of March. Last year the avg. temp was 43 degrees. This year our bill which was twice last year's was based on the avg. temp of 28 degrees. Hmmm.

I got thinking about something a poster said the other day about Al Gore. I did a bit of looking and found an interview he gave a few years ago about his dislike for atheists. It wasn't the fact that they were non-believers that made him dislike them, it was the fact that they were intolerant of the believers like Al Gore a born-again Christian. Isn't he reacting towards the global warming skeptics exactly the way the atheists are reacting to him? He is intolerant of those that question the root cause(s), if any, dismissing very legitimate concerns.

I remember well the Carl Sagan years. He did get a lot of press at that time for his predictions.

BT: I tried 4 times to respond, but apparently I am now for some reason persona non grata on this site. I addressed the part omitted, and as I said on the response that it was not a paraphrase that I made myself. Likely this won't be posted either. Anyway, nice talking to you.
Steve Rowland

Reply: Steve, I posted your response. I don't know what happened. Brett

It is very curious that my above posts did not get put on the blog with the others at the same time this AM, but came about after 2 PM, I guess Brett had his reasons. I was very apprehensive that I had somehow violated the rules of the blog. Since I had not seen a word, I assumed that I was out.

Reply: Your not out at all Steve. The comment section has been under a heavy blitzkrieg of casino/poker spam since this weekend for some reason.

I guess I will address BT's comments for the 5th time as all I see is my middle post to him. I guess it is possible that the post(s) were simply lost as I have had this happen a few times. I was actually beginning to feel that the impression was going to appear that I simply went slinking off without a word myself. Still curious, though.

BT:

Much of my response speaks for itself in my post above, however, I need to address a few things in your post above also.

I did go over and double check the source after you brought it up, as none of the other blog sources showed the full text, so I did a Google of the magazine and looked up the full text in the abstract. I noticed immediately the: 'but ignoring anthropogenic effects'...I was a little taken aback by that because leaving the quote out out does seem to imply somewhat differently what the original authors meant, though I do not agree that it 'stands the meaning on its ear'. Regardless, the whole text should have been included. The implication I see, however, is not the one you see, but simply that Hays et al was saying : "we are stating this with the qualification that should anthropogenic effects increase, our observation may become null and void." Thus they allowed themselves an out as usual.

I do reiterate that even with the term included, MY OWN opinion is that anthropogenic effects have not been shown to be conclusive, although have increased Slightly, thus I still do not see the enormity of the omission, certainly not in the realm of lying.

I also don't not see where I or anyone else suggested we were headed towards 'EMINENT' ice age/glaciation, per Hays et al, thats certainly not how I read it, at the very least, and did not imply it suggested we were headed into eminent ice age.

I read what it stated as literal; That 'over the next seven thousand years' the trend is to cool, leading to a gradual periods glaciation, sic.

Despicable? If you really want to see something despicable, take a look a the following:

http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002906.html
The BBC Changes News to Accommodate Activist

I will quote myself from above: 'If it is being suggested that there was enough 'anthropogenic effects' only a few years after the above quote occurred to change from 'cooling' to 'warming' is simply disingenuous.' THAT is something that Really 'strains credulity.'

I do appreciate the fact that you did not take the presumption that I had intended a lie. No lie was intended. If I conveyed the intent of a lie to other bloggers on this site, they all, as well as you, have my apologies.

Andrew,
It's become a cottage industry finding all of ALGORE's exagerrations. Many of his claims concerning seal levels, surface temps, ice pack melting go way beyond what the IPCC's latest TAR. Yet, those in the AGW camp not stay silent to his fantasies, but in many cases they defend him (see RealClimte's defence of the former VP). ALGORE, a journalist by training, turned politician, turned eviormental radical is tolerated because of a)his political connections and b)his ability to fund raise.

Perhaps Joe B. should have just ignored him as one ignores an eccentric uncle. ALGORE brings nothing to the table other than his belief that he is right and the heretics are wrong. Listening to him is akin to listening to a preacher at an old tent revival.

To add to Patrick Henry's response to gettingcold, note this quote buried in the original link supplied by gettingcold:

"The scientists estimate the level of uncertainty in the measurements is between 2-3 degrees Celsius."

This on a graph that shows a maximum change of +/- 0.1 deg C/yr over about 25 years.

This graph was originally brought up by someone about a week ago over at climateaudit.org. After several comments like Patrick's and mine here, the original poster went on to what he thought might be more fertile ground.

Good evening ladies and gentleman tonight on the Late Show we will have nothing funny, because sometimes people get get upset and do not get a joke. Sorry BT about my failed attempt at alittle humor thrown in here. For some reason that is one thing The Global Warmers do not believe in is people enjoying something and having a little fun, so hey. But on a more serious note, instead of just listening to out-takes of Rush, I strongly recomend listening to an entire show. Also I don't write to try and dissprove the Global Warming believers as they are the ones trying to make people believe their side and need to present their case, as far as I'm concerned the case of the "skeptics" is what you guys need to dissprove not the other way around.

I do appreciate the fact that you did not take the presumption that I had intended a lie. No lie was intended. If I conveyed the intent of a lie to other bloggers on this site, they all, as well as you, have my apologies.

As soon as I realized how widespread (in the blogosphere) the paraphrase was that you pasted, I knew that the paraphrase wasn't your own -- hence my own phrasing.

The explicit reference of the quote, as pasted by you, was to "the Global Cooling scenario back in the 60-s and 70's". Surely we can both agree that this media hysteria was NOT about a seven thousand year scenario. Not even the liberal media can make headlines from from something seven thousand years in the future.

I stand by my characterization of the paraphrase as an intentional distortion, and I fully understand that you were unaware of that when you posted your comment. I again appreciate your integrity, even though we disagree about AGW.

Patrick Henry,

I am really getting confused by your comments here. In the beginning of this post you stated the following:

"In 1801, the eminent British astronomer (William Herschel) reported that when sunspots dotted the sun's surface, grain prices fell. When sunspots waned, prices rose.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0927/p13s03-sten.html

Europe's so-called "Little Ice Age" (1645-1715) coincided with the Maunder Minimum
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf051/sf051a05.htm

Then in your response to me near the bottom of the post you state this:

"As long as incoming heat is greater than outgoing heat, the ocean temperature will rise - and vice versa."

"You can't look at the sunspot information alone and ascertain which direction ocean temperatures should be moving."

Both of these statements appear to contradict each other. What was your point about the 1801 sunspot activity if you state later that you can't rely on sunspot activity alone? Then why did you?

Plus you never really answered my question. How much of a lag time is there between solar radiation cycles and global temperatures and can you provide information to back it up?

Andrew,

You say "Gore is a just a messenger of climate science. He doesn't need to debate anyone."

Al Gore won the Nobel prize. He is not a messenger. He is the LEADER of a movement. Did he win the Nobel Prize by simply "narrating" a science fiction movie? No.

Gore in a statement said "We face a true planetary emergency. The climate 'crisis' is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

A "crisis?"

People, especially leaders, debate in order to better present their side of an arguement. As a politician, he is a master-debater. What's the problem Andrew? I agree, the science IS changing, yet his "message" remains the same. According to you, debating his point-of-view is out of line. Bring it on Al. Let's hear a debate. You are a politician with an agenda.

JP:
You mention Al Gore's exagerations:
Here is a quote from an attendee of his training class in Montreal:

And (for the deniers in the reading audience) Gore addressed directly the question of why he sometimes seems to be overplaying his hand � suggesting that the situation is worse than what mainstream scientific literature is currently reporting.

�The science,� he says, �is constantly emerging and evolving� and scientists are incredibly conservative about what they will say � insisting that they will only commit themselves to things that they can prove. �I have tried to cut through all of that and get the best of scientists go off the record and say, �This is what a reasonable person should conclude from all of the evidence.� �

That explains why, when the scientific community is pointing to models that show a likely maximum sea level increase of one meter this century, Gore feels comfortable to talk about the possibility of an increase in the two- to four-meter range. It�s not what you�ll read in Science magazine, yet, but it makes a lot more sense than the denier position that climate change just isn�t happening, or if it is, we shouldn�t bother to ruffle the economy in an attempt to do something about it.

Interesting Huh? Bald faced lying.

Both of these statements appear to contradict each other. What was your point about the 1801 sunspot activity if you state later that you can't rely on sunspot activity alone? Then why did you?

It's almost as if Patrick Henry's right hand doesn't know what his left hand is doing.

You don't suppose a staffer writing Monday's "Patrick Henry" contribution missed a weekend-man's Sunday "Patrick Henry" entry (at the top), do you?

Or maybe PH simply doesn't feel the need to maintain any internally-consistent world-view -- hobgoblins, "little minds", and all that.

Hi Dennis Hlinka,

You are looking at a complex system with many degrees of freedom, and trying to make temperature movement predictions based on only one. That won't work.

When ocean temperatures are high, the tendency is for heat to move out of the ocean and cause cooling. We have been seeing that for the last ten years. When ocean temperatures are low, we see the opposite.

The Maunder Minimum coincided with a long period of low sunspot activity. It is very unlikely that this is a coincidence. If solar activity remains low for a long period of time, it will probably happen again. Which is the point of this article.

During most of the 20th century, solar activity was unusually high, which caused the oceans to warm. As long as all of the sources of heat coming in to the ocean are greater than the heat leaving the ocean, the temperature will rise.

The point being that the rise or fall of ocean temperature is as a function of both the incoming heat sources and the current heat content of the ocean. Since the heat content of the ocean is currently high, the tendency is for temperatures to fall - as we are currently seeing. Nature tries to keep equilibrium.

The thermal mass of the oceans is very high, so movement is slow. The oceans behave as a huge low-pass filter - which is what Hansen is always writing about when claiming that we have 100 years of heating already built into the system.

I have been reading this blog for the last couple of weeks, and I am impressed and thankful that there is still a place that we can go where all opinions are welcome.

I am relatively new to the AGW arena, and the opinions expressed here have been intriguing. I would like to share mine...

I believe the onus is on the believers to convince the world of the impact of AGW to justify changes in policy and legislation. (If no changes are made from this point on, the deniers "win".)

I think it would be a fair assessment to say that at least ninety percent of deniers are conservative, and at least ninety percent of believers are liberal. Not all, as I'm sure there are some that cross the aisle for both sides.

With that in mind, it seems that all things that believers push for with regards to AGW would be beneficial to liberals in general - for example, raising taxes for big companies, or more government programs.

It is this line of thinking that leads me to believe that the AGW agenda is being driven backwards. That is to say, AGW is a convenient excuse to push agendas that a liberal would normally support anyway.

So here's what might sway me - a solution to our AGW problems, but one that would benefit conservatives. Something that would bring about change, but would perhaps be something that a liberal would not want to support, separate from the prevention/reversal of AGW.

Thank you for the forum, and I look forward to replies from people of all views.

Triple C:

Welcome to the Blog.
I agree with your first point. I agree with your second. I agree with your third. I agree with your fourth.

What's going to sway you is never going to happen.

See you around.

Steve,

Thanks for the reply. I was brainstorming today, trying to come up with solutions that might fit this criteria.

It's not necessarily pro-conservative, but I believe most liberals (indeed, many conservatives) would have a difficult time supporting the use of nuclear power as a way to reduce carbon emissions. I guess it's a matter of what one considers a worse evil.

Nuclear power may be a solution, though. Something to consider.

Back to you, Triple C:

I have asked many of the AGW proponents on the blog if they advocate nuclear power and have had no replies. I think that's answer enough to the question.

I strongly advocate the use of nuclear power in the absence of any alternative energy by the advocates that is reasonably worth pursuing. Hopefully technology will eventually crack the riddle of cold fusion and nuclear will go nuclear, sic.

Quite frankly also, I suspect that most of those on this blog who are AGW proponents are of the liberal political persuasion. I say this completely without any real evidence of fact to the comment, its just a suspicion. Makes absolutely no difference though, but, if true it does further show how philosophy affects perception, on this blog, and life in general.

I have asked many of the AGW proponents on the blog if they advocate nuclear power and have had no replies. I think that's answer enough to the question.

Horsefeathers, Steve.

I've stated my opinion that we need massive and immediate investment in safe and reliable nuclear power numerous times here. I note that our own Patrick Henry has argued against me when I did.

It's easy enough to search the archives, will you do it or shall I?

Steve,

I think there are many on this blog who agree with the scientific consensus on AGW and support nuclear power, including myself. However, your prophet, Patrick Henry, believes that the world will end if we embrace good, safe nuclear technology.

good, safe nuclear technology

Mark,

Three contradictions in four words.

Existing nuclear technology has the power to end life as we know it in a matter of minutes. You would have to be in a complete stupor to not recognize that fact.

There is not enough commercially available Uranium to run the world for very long, so we will see a rapid transition to breeder reactors. Even Jimmy Carter was bright enough to see danger there.

Imagine our current world of civilization hating suicide bombers armed with nuclear weapons. There have been 11,000 terror attacks since 9/11 - this site keeps track of them.
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

BT and Mark,

Assuming you are liberal (which you haven't stated, so I don't know) -

For supporting nuclear power, would you suppose you are in the minority? Or are there relatively few "loud" extremists that give the wrong impression of most liberals?

New to the blog and have no problem with science linking fossil fuel emissions with climate change. Makes complete sense to me, cause and effect and all. For the record I'm a leftist and, as you may guess, against nuclear power.

Why:

1. We replace one major issue (greenhouse gas emissions) with a second major issue (nuclear waste, safety).
2. Nuclear is not renewable and if the whole world decides to use nuclear as it's magic bullet then we have serious fuel issues in store, not to mention rising fuel prices.
3. Nuclear power and nuclear weapons go hand in hand.
4. Nuclear power is extremely inefficient with vast amounts of energy simply being wasted as heat or transmission losses. You could build all your N-Plants in cities and pipe the excess heat to make a large CHP (massively improves efficiency) but who's going to go for that next to their kids school?
5. Nuclear power is dangerous. We might believe we've tamed the atom but accidents happen and I for one believe the risk is to great. More plants, more risk, especially in countries that are less developed than our own.
6. Nuclear power is the most expensive way to boil water. No-one is stupid enough to build N-Plants unless they are either underwritten by the state (i.e. we take the liability - and burden if something happens) or fixed prices / tariffs / subsidies are agreed for long periods of time.
7. Nuclear power produces the most toxic substances know to man. These substances will still be hear long after the demise of fission. We have no understanding of what will happen to the integrity or security of those substances over such long periods of time - longer than humanities existence itself. We're guessing...
8. In relation to point 7 we don't actually have a solution, except "nuclear landfill" i.e. a big, deep hole in the ground, and some tightly crossed fingers.
9. Mining uranium ore is dirty and dangerous, and as ore quality falls so more energy is required to make it useful.
10. Nuclear only affects a tiny part of the total energy we use. Since most space heating is gas based, and transport oil based, nuclear has negligible effects unless we ditch all that in favour of electricity (not likely).

So, what's to do instead:

1. Improve efficiency, stop wasting energy. We can't consume forever and we have to appreciate that energy is far to valuable to waste. That doesn't mean we go back to candles and horse carts, but it does mean we get smarter. Small changes can have enormous effects on energy requirements. Grants should be available to mandate efficiency drives.
2. We invest in new technology that is renewable. This includes a diverse mix of generation (as opposed to the nuclear - all eggs in one basket centralized approach) such as hydro, wind, waves, solar, geothermal, tidal, CHP, limited biofuels etc. Energy security comes from having diverse generation using readily available, local fuels (lots of countries have no Uranium so they're stuck with imports).
3. We make micro generation competitive by allowing people to generate their own electricity and sell excess back to the grid at the same rate as generators charge.
4. We invest in storage technologies, such as pumped storage to help us better utilize the generation we have.
5. We invest in new energy carriers, such as Hydrogen and technologies such as fuel cells which may in turn help with transport etc.
6. We invest in carbon capture and other technologies to clean up fossil fuels.
7. We realise that investment in new technology can be a good thing for economies and jobs.
8. Greater use of CHP which vastly improves the efficiency of plant and improves energy security if it's diverse.
9. Subsidise energy companies to use clean generation over polluting generation with tax breaks for new cleaner generation.
10. Educate.

Of course, it can't all happen overnight, but neither can building a fleet of nuclear plants across the globe. What's for sure, is if we make no attempt to even look at the alternatives then they definitely won't ever progress or improve in terms of economics. Nuclear was non to economic in the 50's (and really still isn't) but it's had lots of subsidies to help it progress (oh, and the requirement for a bomb helped as well).

Of course there are drawbacks, such as environmental impacts of some renewable technologies and limitations such as variability. However, we know these technologies can work, and countries are already leading the way with them. I believe the nuclear choice in time leads us right back to square 1, with a nice toxic headache for us all to deal with to boot. I am also not comfortable with having to explain to my grandchildren why we substituted one problem for another, palmed it off so to speak, so we in this generation didn't have to make some slightly more difficult choices.

(But hey, if climate change theory is some made up fabrication / conspiracy as some seem to believe then pumping out greenhouse gasses doesn't actually matter becuase they have no effect on climate. In which case let's just burn burn burn.)