Sunspots don’t cause global warming
Leading scientists have dismissed studies which say that global warming is a natural phenomenon connected with sunspots, rather than the result of the man-made emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2).
According to a report in The Independent, the researchers, all experts in climate or solar science, said that the scientific evidence continually cited by skeptics to promote the idea of sunspots being the cause of global warming is deeply flawed.
Studies published in 1991 and 1998 claimed to establish a link between global temperatures and solar activity – sunspots – and continue to be cited by climate skeptics.
However, problems with the data used to establish the correlation have been identified by other experts and the flaws are now widely accepted by the scientific community, even though the studies continue to be used to support the idea that global warming is “natural”.
The issue has gained new importance in the light of opinion polls showing that nearly one in two people now believe global warming is a natural phenomenon unconnected with CO2 emissions.
Powerful support for this idea came in 1991 when Eigil Friis-Christensen, director of the Danish National Space Centre, published a study showing a remarkable correlation between global warming and the length of sunspot cycles.
A further study published in 1998 by Friis-Christensen and his colleague Henrik Svensmark suggested a possible explanation for the warming trend with a link between solar activity, cosmic rays and the formation of clouds.
However, many scientists now believe both of these studies are seriously flawed, and that when errors introduced into the analysis are removed, the correlations disappear, with no link between sunspots and global warming.
According to Peter Laut, a former adviser to the Danish Energy Agency who first identified the flaws, there were practically no observations to support the idea that variations in sunspots played more than a minor role in global warming.
Laut’s analysis of the flaws is accepted by most scientists familiar with the research, including Paul Crutzen, an atmospheric chemist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on understanding the hole in the ozone layer.
“There is definitely a problem (with these studies). Laut has really pinned it down but the (sunspot) argument keeps reappearing and its quite irritating.” Professor Crutzen said.
“I’ve looked into this quite closely and I’m on Laut’s side in terms of his analysis of the data,” said Professor Stefan Rahsmstorf, of Potsdam University.
ANI
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Factors relating separately to time or magnitude correlate poorly but the combination or time-integral combined with an effective ocean turnover gives an excellant correlation.
A fairly simple model accurately predicts average global temperatures since 1895 with no need whatsoever to consider changes in the level of CO2 or any other greenhouse gas. The model, with an eye-opening graph, is presented in the October 16 pdf at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true.
This model predicted the ongoing temperature decline trend. None of the 20 or so models that the IPCC uses do.
By all means, write it up and submit it to Science or Nature or another peer-reviewed journal. If your summary is accurate it sounds like you could have a pivotal paper that will be cited for years to come.
Unless of course, your analysis is as flawed as the one you are critiquing. Oh, and did anybody ever mention to you that causation != correlation?
I don't have time to analyze an infinite number of blogs posts. This is what science publication and peer-review is for, so until I see a journal citation I'll not hold my breath.
Just before posting this comment, I realized I accidentally clicked on the wrong PDF on climaterealists.com. Everything written below does not apply to the PDF Dan Pangburn cites, but I'm posting it anyway as an indication of the quality of the scholarship on that site.
In reference to the cited PDF about modeling agt by sunspots and the PDO, the author performs a few suspicious steps of adjusting proportionality constants and so on to make his model line up with the actual measurements. It might be perfectly valid, but again, this is what peer-review is for. Specialists in the climate field need to review it to see if its accurate, and until then, I see no reason to throw out the weight of established evidence based on a 2-page rant by an engineer (not a climate scientist).
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Oh, and since I'm a sucker, I did take a look at the PDF. So, to follow up on my earlier post, since the writer claims you don't need to understand the minutae of climate and weather to model climate as a control system, I'll explain why I do not need to evaluate the minutae of the writer's errors to demonstrate why the conclusions drawn do not follow from the model presented at the linked source.
Fallacy #1: Ice core records that show CO2 following climate change do NOT imply that climate cannot follow CO2 if it is unnaturally forced. We are spiking CO2 in the atmosphere at a rate that is historically unprecedented, so all bets are off.
Fallacy #2: The claim that the engineering field of control theory shows that historical down-swings in average global temperature (agt) are impossible if there is a net positive feedback between agt and climate are bogus. This argument is dropped in without clear support and from there the author draws the conclusion that there is NO net positive feedback between agt and climate therefore atmospheric CO2 levels are unimportant. All this hidden behind the assertion that control theory is a graduate-level engineering discipline. Well, guess what? I'm a graduate-level engineer, and in my UNDERGRADUATE controls theory course I learned that the assertions made apply to LINEAR, TIME-INVARIANT systems. Guess which of those two constraints apply to climate? That's right kids, neither.
I could go on but I have better things to do. As I said before, show me the same thing written up and submitted to a respectible journal, passing peer-review, and I'll take a little more time to reconsider, but right now I have to get back to my real job…
I could be paddling a rowboat down Market Street in San Francisco after the poles have melted, and there will still be conservative fanatics who deny that humans are responsible for Global Warming or that it is even real. I invite you to my web-pages devoted to raising awareness on this urgent issue: http://pltcldscsn.blogspot.com/2009/12/conservatives-still-deny-global-warming.html
Anonymous, Apparently the research that "accurately predicts average global temperatures since 1895" in the October 16 pdf at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true is too complex for you to grasp. So you will just have to continue to wonder (along with Trenberth et. al.) why the cooling trend is down while the CO2 level continues to go up.
Global warming, huh? Then can someone tell me why Louisiana is starting to consistently see snow more and more each year? This year, last year, and 2005- before that, nothing since 1989.
Why, this year, has snow fallen at the earliest it's ever, in my lifetime? It's fairly short, but it still puzzles me.
Now, I do understand our ice caps are melting, but I'm seeing a lot of overlaps here. Also, The Earth has gone through periods of warming and cooling naturally, long before we were here. We may be speeding it up, but we're not the cause of global warming.
Wouldn't it be better to ere on the side of caution, just in case?
That was really really great! counseling fort worth.