You're looking at a clear and undeniable inverse relationship between solar trends and warming trends. Causation of the latter by the former is thus absurd.
Given yesterday's new IPCC report (not that it will actually spur Bush to action), and this nice item I found on Fred Singer, I thought I'd put some of the good tidbits together:
From DailyKos' seesdifferent:
One enterprising student noted that the axes were different. whoops. To old Fred, whatever it showed, that was enough to throw out CO2 as the bad actor in this global warming scheme.Very nice summary and set of links regarding solar forcing/cosmic rays. Also, seesdifferent analyzes Singer's funding from Big Oil/Coal (and his other eccentric behaviors) at the beginning of the article. The old man used to be a complete denialist about warming, whereas he has evolved now to accept warming but deny human activity as a primary cause thereof.
He said, in response to a question, that the 2500-odd scientists who wrote the IPCC report had "no evidence" that warming was due to CO2. NO EVIDENCE.
His words.
And what, pray tell, Old Fred, might be a better candidate than CO2? Well, I almost hesitate to say it; I almost believed I didn't hear it. But I did: as he said in this interview with the Ely, NV Times, Fred's candidate is ....cosmic rays.Q: When you say global warming is natural, what is your chief culprit?Yes, the debunked cosmic ray theory; but Fred said he "knows about cosmic rays because that's what he did [his] doctoral thesis on." And this sad stuff outweighs, in Fred Singer's mind, the IPCC scientists and their report. You remember, those 2500 guys who are over thirty but less than eighty....?
A: The sun. The sun. Definitely. The evidence we have shows an extremely strong correlation with solar activity. The (Earth's) temperature follows the solar activity and the correlation is very strong. The mechanism itself is still under some dispute, but we think in some way the sun influences cosmic rays, which in turn influences cloudiness.
Q: That doesn't even count the heat output of the sun, which changes over time, doesn't it?
A: Those are very small and are not enough to account for all the climate changes that we see. What is causing it is not just the heat of the sun, but emissions from the sun that we don't see -- except with satellites and spacecraft -- the so-called solar winds and magnetic fields.
Now, there is a chain of rationales here; cosmic rays have been linked to atmospheric particle formation which can lead to cloud formation which can lead theoretically to either more or less warming. But there is no correlation between solar activity and recent climate change. A relevant study can be found here, showing the data:There are many interesting palaeoclimate studies that suggest that solar variability had an influence on pre-industrial climate. There are also some detection–attribution studies using global climate models that suggest there was a detectable influence of solar variability in the first half of the twentieth century and that the solar radiative forcing variations were amplified by some mechanism that is, as yet, unknown. However, these findings are not relevant to any debates about modern climate change. Our results show that the observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability, whichever of the mechanisms is invoked and no matter how much the solar variation is amplified.Further, if you would like to read some analysis of the foul smell emanating from cosmic ray "research", go here.
From 9/29:
Just yesterday, I had a surprising conversation with the physics teacher at our school, Mary Peterson, who told me that both she and her husband are "climate skeptics". I started a conversation with her, and she told me that the sorts of scientific issues she feels are unresolved involve such things as Mars warming and the decay of the magnetic field of the earth. What was amazing to me was that, although her degree and background are in mathematics and not physics, she certainly had the available faculties to look up and investigate the veracity of these objections for herself, but hadn't. I found out that she had heard this somewhere (Faux News, probably), and had simply believed her source enough not to even go check it out. Little did she know that scientists have addressed all these possible alternative explanations for years, and that they have all been found lacking in merit for various technical reasons.Add to my list this new piece in the BBC examining the arguments put forth by the "Top 10" contrarians: no surprise, there's no consensus among them.
I really recommend the following index and "guides" for point-by-point refutations of the common objections to man-made climate change:These are all excellent resources with scientific references that should be shared amongst all your friends and colleagues, especially those with whom you think contentious discussions on climate change could take place.
- The IPCC AR4 report FAQ section (pdf)
- Coby Beck's How to talk to Global Warming Skeptic
- New Scientist: Climate Change: A guide for the perplexed
- RealClimate: Response to common contrarian arguments
- NERC (UK): Climate change debate summary
- UK Met Office: Climate Change Myths
- Brian Angliss A Thorough Debunking
- John Cross Skeptical Science
