SUNSPOTS MAY BE THE REAL CAUSE
I recieved the 'following' article in an email and left it intact.
READ THE SUNSPOTS
The mud at the bottom of British Columbia fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change - and that we should prepare now for dangerous global 'Cooling'
R. TIMOTHY PATTERSON, Financial Post
Published: Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Politicians and environmentalists these days convey the impression that climate-change research is an exceptionally dull field with little left to discover. We are assured by everyone from David Suzuki to Al Gore to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that "the science is settled." At the recent G8 summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel even attempted to convince world leaders to play God by restricting carbon-dioxide emissions to a level that would magically limit the rise in world temperatures to 2C.
The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn't seem to bother our leaders at all. Inviting testimony only from those who don't question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of "stopping global climate change." Liberal MP Ralph Goodale's June 11 House of Commons assertion that Parliament should have "a real good discussion about the potential for carbon capture and sequestration in dealing with carbon dioxide, which has tremendous potential for improving the climate, not only here in Canada but around the world," would be humorous were he, and even the current government, not deadly serious about devoting vast resources to this hopeless crusade.
Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists.
View Larger Image
Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet.
My interest in the current climate-change debate was triggered in 1998, when I was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council strategic project grant to determine if there were regular cycles in West Coast fish productivity. As a result of wide swings in the populations of anchovies, herring and other commercially important West Coast fish stock, fisheries managers were having a very difficult time establishing appropriate fishing quotas. One season there would be abundant stock and broad harvesting would be acceptable; the very next year the fisheries would collapse. No one really knew why or how to predict the future health of this crucially important resource.
Although climate was suspected to play a significant role in marine productivity, only since the beginning of the 20th century have accurate fishing and temperature records been kept in this region of the northeast Pacific. We needed indicators of fish productivity over thousands of years to see whether there were recurring cycles in populations and what phenomena may be driving the changes.
My research team began to collect and analyze core samples from the bottom of deep Western Canadian fjords. The regions in which we chose to conduct our research, Effingham Inlet on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, and in 2001, sounds in the Belize-Seymour Inlet complex on the mainland coast of British Columbia, were perfect for this sort of work. The topography of these fjords is such that they contain deep basins that are subject to little water transfer from the open ocean and so water near the bottom is relatively stagnant and very low in oxygen content. As a consequence, the floors of these basins are mostly lifeless and sediment layers build up year after year, undisturbed over millennia.
Using various coring technologies, we have been able to collect more than 5,000 years' worth of mud in these basins, with the oldest layers coming from a depth of about 11 metres below the fjord floor. Clearly visible in our mud cores are annual changes that record the different seasons: corresponding to the cool, rainy winter seasons, we see dark layers composed mostly of dirt washed into the fjord from the land; in the warm summer months we see abundant fossilized fish scales and diatoms (the most common form of phytoplankton, or single-celled ocean plants) that have fallen to the fjord floor from nutrient-rich surface waters. In years when warm summers dominated climate in the region, we clearly see far thicker layers of diatoms and fish scales than we do in cooler years. Ours is one of the highest-quality climate records available anywhere today and in it we see obvious confirmation that natural climate change can be dramatic. For example, in the middle of a 62-year slice of the record at about 4,400 years ago, there was a shift in climate in only a couple of seasons from warm, dry and sunny conditions to one that was mostly cold and rainy for several decades.
Using computers to conduct what is referred to as a "time series analysis" on the colouration and thickness of the annual layers, we have discovered repeated cycles in marine productivity in this, a region larger than Europe. Specifically, we find a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year "Schwabe" sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%. Sunspots, violent storms on the surface of the sun, have the effect of increasing solar output, so, by counting the spots visible on the surface of our star, we have an indirect measure of its varying brightness. Such records have been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine productivity we are observing.
In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records, we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that match well with the sun's 75-90-year "Gleissberg Cycle," the 200-500-year "Suess Cycle" and the 1,100-1,500-year "Bond Cycle." The strength of these cycles is seen to vary over time, fading in and out over the millennia. The variation in the sun's brightness over these longer cycles may be many times greater in magnitude than that measured over the short Schwabe cycle and so are seen to impact marine productivity even more significantly.
Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called "proxies") is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia's Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change.
However, there was a problem. Despite this clear and repeated correlation, the measured variations in incoming solar energy were, on their own, not sufficient to cause the climate changes we have observed in our proxies. In addition, even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century's modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate change.
Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun's energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these "high sun" periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.
The opposite occurs when the sun is less bright. More cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth's atmosphere, more clouds form, and the planet cools more than would otherwise be the case due to direct solar effects alone. This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere, as indicated by the number of sunspots, was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age. These new findings suggest that changes in the output of the sun caused the most recent climate change. By comparison, CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales.
In some fields the science is indeed "settled." For example, plate tectonics, once highly controversial, is now so well-established that we rarely see papers on the subject at all. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.
Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.
Meantime, we need to continue research into this, the most complex field of science ever tackled, and immediately halt wasted expenditures on the King Canute-like task of "stopping climate change."
R. Timothy Patterson is professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University
The following additiional highlights are from an article in the popular magazine, 'Discover' 'Science Technology and the Future', July 2007, found on the newsstands or on-line. Marion Long interviewed 'HENRIK SVENSMARK', (mentioned by name in the previous article) Director of 'The Center for Sun Climate Research' at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen Denmark.
HENRIK SVENSMARK, a Physicist, refers to these studies as 'Cosmo-climatology' in reference to the positioning of our Solar System in an arm of our Galaxy.
HENRIK SVENSMARK was intrigued by the 1991 studies of 100 years related to the 'Sun Spot' activity recorded and compared to the available 100 year recorded world climate changes. EIGIL FIN-CHRISTENSEN and KNUD LASSE CHRISTENSEN.
HENRIK SVENSMARK theorizes, after much on going and future below ground Lab research, (Ion Isolation) that "A high level of Solar Activity, (Solar Flares) Suppresses the flow of 'Cosmic Rays' striking Earths atmosphere, could result in 'FEWER' Clouds and a 'WARMER' Planet. The Sun has been in a 'High Activity' state throughout recent history. The president of 'CARLSBERG BEER' is one of the financial sources for this study due to his scientific background and innate curiosity. Pretty good Beer, from what I understand, care to discuss this over a 'Brewsky'?
This research shows a correlation back hundreds of years. If you have read the previous article BRITISH COLUMBIA Fjord research, the record is back into the thousands of years. The GRISDA.org studies are based on even very reliable human written records. Historical 'Shipping Manifests' showing the trade of produce from Northern Europe during the History of Climate Change in 'The Old World'. 'English Friars' (Friar Tuck?) selling their wine (the original English Pub owners?) during a much warmer period to other countries further south? 'Greenland' actually 'Green'? The fabled 'NORTHWEST PASSAGE' actually open?
Quote;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/northwest_passage
"Around the time of the Viking Sagas and for at least two more centuries (a conservative interval from 1000–1200 AD that also happens to include the dates allotted to some of the larger Norse ships), prior to the 'Little Ice Age' the climate was not only warmer, but the sea-level in the Arctic was also quite different from that of the present day.[7] Between the glacial rebound and global cooling, land levels of the land masses about the Northwest Passage have risen upwards to the order of 20 m in the centuries after the Viking times".
Recent history cycles, 400 years cooler followed by 400 years warmer, the Northwest Passage, which the 'VIKINGS' heard rumors of from the 'Inuit', was closed up tighter than a 'tick' around the year 1600. Lots of ships learned that the hard way. (see the wiki link. Note the dates of the exploration ships)
See my right sidebar link to research on 'Global Warming' including more links.
HENRIK SVENSMARKS new Book "THE CHILLING STARS" A New Theory of Climate Change, has an opening quote from EUGENE PARKER, the Astrophysicist that discovered the existence of The 'SOLAR WIND'.
"Global Warming has become a Political Issue both in Government and the Scientific Community, the Scientific Lines have been drawn by Eminent Scientists and an 'Important' new idea is an Unwelcome Intruder, it upsets the established 'Orthodoxy'.
I have watched recently, an Iranian woman news reporter (safely in another country) doing an interview with a prominent radical Jihad advocating Mullah in Iran on a TV link. As she quoted fact after fact about the absolute violence of Islam, the Mullah kept shouting "Blasphemy Blasphemy" (Heresy Heresy)
I lately see a definite link in the mindsets of both the radical Jihad advocating Mullahs and the Global Warming Advocates. If you can't debate the issues just shout down the opposing viewpoint, or advocate POLITICALLY MOTIVATED laws to 'silence' their discussion.
READ THE SUNSPOTS
The mud at the bottom of British Columbia fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change - and that we should prepare now for dangerous global 'Cooling'
R. TIMOTHY PATTERSON, Financial Post
Published: Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Politicians and environmentalists these days convey the impression that climate-change research is an exceptionally dull field with little left to discover. We are assured by everyone from David Suzuki to Al Gore to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that "the science is settled." At the recent G8 summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel even attempted to convince world leaders to play God by restricting carbon-dioxide emissions to a level that would magically limit the rise in world temperatures to 2C.
The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn't seem to bother our leaders at all. Inviting testimony only from those who don't question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of "stopping global climate change." Liberal MP Ralph Goodale's June 11 House of Commons assertion that Parliament should have "a real good discussion about the potential for carbon capture and sequestration in dealing with carbon dioxide, which has tremendous potential for improving the climate, not only here in Canada but around the world," would be humorous were he, and even the current government, not deadly serious about devoting vast resources to this hopeless crusade.
Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists.
View Larger Image
Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet.
My interest in the current climate-change debate was triggered in 1998, when I was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council strategic project grant to determine if there were regular cycles in West Coast fish productivity. As a result of wide swings in the populations of anchovies, herring and other commercially important West Coast fish stock, fisheries managers were having a very difficult time establishing appropriate fishing quotas. One season there would be abundant stock and broad harvesting would be acceptable; the very next year the fisheries would collapse. No one really knew why or how to predict the future health of this crucially important resource.
Although climate was suspected to play a significant role in marine productivity, only since the beginning of the 20th century have accurate fishing and temperature records been kept in this region of the northeast Pacific. We needed indicators of fish productivity over thousands of years to see whether there were recurring cycles in populations and what phenomena may be driving the changes.
My research team began to collect and analyze core samples from the bottom of deep Western Canadian fjords. The regions in which we chose to conduct our research, Effingham Inlet on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, and in 2001, sounds in the Belize-Seymour Inlet complex on the mainland coast of British Columbia, were perfect for this sort of work. The topography of these fjords is such that they contain deep basins that are subject to little water transfer from the open ocean and so water near the bottom is relatively stagnant and very low in oxygen content. As a consequence, the floors of these basins are mostly lifeless and sediment layers build up year after year, undisturbed over millennia.
Using various coring technologies, we have been able to collect more than 5,000 years' worth of mud in these basins, with the oldest layers coming from a depth of about 11 metres below the fjord floor. Clearly visible in our mud cores are annual changes that record the different seasons: corresponding to the cool, rainy winter seasons, we see dark layers composed mostly of dirt washed into the fjord from the land; in the warm summer months we see abundant fossilized fish scales and diatoms (the most common form of phytoplankton, or single-celled ocean plants) that have fallen to the fjord floor from nutrient-rich surface waters. In years when warm summers dominated climate in the region, we clearly see far thicker layers of diatoms and fish scales than we do in cooler years. Ours is one of the highest-quality climate records available anywhere today and in it we see obvious confirmation that natural climate change can be dramatic. For example, in the middle of a 62-year slice of the record at about 4,400 years ago, there was a shift in climate in only a couple of seasons from warm, dry and sunny conditions to one that was mostly cold and rainy for several decades.
Using computers to conduct what is referred to as a "time series analysis" on the colouration and thickness of the annual layers, we have discovered repeated cycles in marine productivity in this, a region larger than Europe. Specifically, we find a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year "Schwabe" sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%. Sunspots, violent storms on the surface of the sun, have the effect of increasing solar output, so, by counting the spots visible on the surface of our star, we have an indirect measure of its varying brightness. Such records have been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine productivity we are observing.
In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records, we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that match well with the sun's 75-90-year "Gleissberg Cycle," the 200-500-year "Suess Cycle" and the 1,100-1,500-year "Bond Cycle." The strength of these cycles is seen to vary over time, fading in and out over the millennia. The variation in the sun's brightness over these longer cycles may be many times greater in magnitude than that measured over the short Schwabe cycle and so are seen to impact marine productivity even more significantly.
Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called "proxies") is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia's Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change.
However, there was a problem. Despite this clear and repeated correlation, the measured variations in incoming solar energy were, on their own, not sufficient to cause the climate changes we have observed in our proxies. In addition, even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century's modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate change.
Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun's energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these "high sun" periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.
The opposite occurs when the sun is less bright. More cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth's atmosphere, more clouds form, and the planet cools more than would otherwise be the case due to direct solar effects alone. This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere, as indicated by the number of sunspots, was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age. These new findings suggest that changes in the output of the sun caused the most recent climate change. By comparison, CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales.
In some fields the science is indeed "settled." For example, plate tectonics, once highly controversial, is now so well-established that we rarely see papers on the subject at all. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.
Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.
Meantime, we need to continue research into this, the most complex field of science ever tackled, and immediately halt wasted expenditures on the King Canute-like task of "stopping climate change."
R. Timothy Patterson is professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University
The following additiional highlights are from an article in the popular magazine, 'Discover' 'Science Technology and the Future', July 2007, found on the newsstands or on-line. Marion Long interviewed 'HENRIK SVENSMARK', (mentioned by name in the previous article) Director of 'The Center for Sun Climate Research' at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen Denmark.
HENRIK SVENSMARK, a Physicist, refers to these studies as 'Cosmo-climatology' in reference to the positioning of our Solar System in an arm of our Galaxy.
HENRIK SVENSMARK was intrigued by the 1991 studies of 100 years related to the 'Sun Spot' activity recorded and compared to the available 100 year recorded world climate changes. EIGIL FIN-CHRISTENSEN and KNUD LASSE CHRISTENSEN.
HENRIK SVENSMARK theorizes, after much on going and future below ground Lab research, (Ion Isolation) that "A high level of Solar Activity, (Solar Flares) Suppresses the flow of 'Cosmic Rays' striking Earths atmosphere, could result in 'FEWER' Clouds and a 'WARMER' Planet. The Sun has been in a 'High Activity' state throughout recent history. The president of 'CARLSBERG BEER' is one of the financial sources for this study due to his scientific background and innate curiosity. Pretty good Beer, from what I understand, care to discuss this over a 'Brewsky'?
This research shows a correlation back hundreds of years. If you have read the previous article BRITISH COLUMBIA Fjord research, the record is back into the thousands of years. The GRISDA.org studies are based on even very reliable human written records. Historical 'Shipping Manifests' showing the trade of produce from Northern Europe during the History of Climate Change in 'The Old World'. 'English Friars' (Friar Tuck?) selling their wine (the original English Pub owners?) during a much warmer period to other countries further south? 'Greenland' actually 'Green'? The fabled 'NORTHWEST PASSAGE' actually open?
Quote;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/northwest_passage
"Around the time of the Viking Sagas and for at least two more centuries (a conservative interval from 1000–1200 AD that also happens to include the dates allotted to some of the larger Norse ships), prior to the 'Little Ice Age' the climate was not only warmer, but the sea-level in the Arctic was also quite different from that of the present day.[7] Between the glacial rebound and global cooling, land levels of the land masses about the Northwest Passage have risen upwards to the order of 20 m in the centuries after the Viking times".
Recent history cycles, 400 years cooler followed by 400 years warmer, the Northwest Passage, which the 'VIKINGS' heard rumors of from the 'Inuit', was closed up tighter than a 'tick' around the year 1600. Lots of ships learned that the hard way. (see the wiki link. Note the dates of the exploration ships)
See my right sidebar link to research on 'Global Warming' including more links.
HENRIK SVENSMARKS new Book "THE CHILLING STARS" A New Theory of Climate Change, has an opening quote from EUGENE PARKER, the Astrophysicist that discovered the existence of The 'SOLAR WIND'.
"Global Warming has become a Political Issue both in Government and the Scientific Community, the Scientific Lines have been drawn by Eminent Scientists and an 'Important' new idea is an Unwelcome Intruder, it upsets the established 'Orthodoxy'.
I have watched recently, an Iranian woman news reporter (safely in another country) doing an interview with a prominent radical Jihad advocating Mullah in Iran on a TV link. As she quoted fact after fact about the absolute violence of Islam, the Mullah kept shouting "Blasphemy Blasphemy" (Heresy Heresy)
I lately see a definite link in the mindsets of both the radical Jihad advocating Mullahs and the Global Warming Advocates. If you can't debate the issues just shout down the opposing viewpoint, or advocate POLITICALLY MOTIVATED laws to 'silence' their discussion.
posted by Blogengeezer at Friday, June 29, 2007
9 Comments:
Earth's climate is very sensitive to solar activity. In 2005, Sami Solanki at the Max Planck Insitute compared solar activity & temperatures over the past 1150 years and found temperatures closely correlate to solar activity. When sunspot activity was low during the Maunder Minimum in the 1600's or the Dalton Minimum in the 1800's, the earth went through 'small ice ages'. The sun has been unusually hot in the last century - solar output rose dramatically in the early 20th century accompanied by a sharp rise in global temperatures.
However, Solanki also found the correlation between solar activity and global temperatures ended around 1975. At that point, temperatures started rising while solar activity stayed level. This led him to conclude "during these last 30 years the solar total irradiance, solar UV irradiance and cosmic ray flux has not shown any significant secular trend, so that at least this most recent warming episode must have another source."
Similarly with cosmic rays, the whole problem with the theory that cosmic rays (or lack thereof) are driving global warming is that cosmic radiation has shown no trend over the last 50 years. This has led the Max Planck Institute to conclude that cosmic ray flux and temperature followed each other up to 1970 but there has been no correlation between temperature and cosmic ray flux since 1970. So even if cosmic rays are linked to cloud formation, all they'll find is the cloud formation 50 years ago is similar to now and has little to no impact on the last 30 years of long term global warming.
The sun has been the primary driver of Earth's climate in the past but solar variations are conspicuous in their absence over the last 30 years of long term global warming.
I use this comment from R. Timothy Pattersons article to illustrate a point.
"Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists".
I believe the main point of this topic of discussion is, 'Should the 'politically motivated' 'pull the trigger' prematurely just to be on the safe side as they so vehemtly proclaim? Many police officers are in prison for that instinctive impulse.
In response to JC's well documented comment, I offer this well documented link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane
You may notice during the reading, that a vindication of 'SVENSMARK's Theory emerges.
"The Cosmic Rays striking the water molecules in the atmosphere are the major tool for removing METHANE"
METHANE which is 25 times as potent as CO2 when it comes to effect on our GLOBAL WARMING.
Read the entire article. It seems the UN must have read it recently because they seem to agree.
Also keep in mind that the Earths population has multiplied by a factor of at least 6.7 during the same time as the amount of METHANE in the atmosphere has gone up 150%. Now there is a solution. Remove 7 out of every 10 people on Earth and you will have solved the problem....At least for the remaining three out of the ten.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Now that we are discussing the myriad possible causes of GLOBAL WARMING, lets put another stick in the fire. The Earths MAGNETIC NORTH POLE has been moving Northeast. By the beginning of the 19th century it was moving at about 10 KM every 100 years. by 2003 it has been moving at 40KM and accelerating. It will be near Siberia in the near future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/north_magnetic_pole
Now lets surmise that the Earths magnetic core is moving towards 'geomagnetic Reversal'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/geomagnetic_reversal
which it has averaged about 1 to 5 times per million years. It has been the same for the last 780,000 years. (overdue for a flip?)
Now we enter the roll played by the Magnetic field in shielding the Earth from 'Cosmic Rays', See where we are heading in this discussion?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/aurora_%28astronomy%29
The Aurora Borealis is one obvious indicator of the roll played by the Earths magnetic field. The Cosmic Rays are diverted by the Magnetic field of the earth. This also is in the same realm of science as the previous studies of the aforementioned experts in the articles above. Please check out the entire story. Do not take mine or anyone else's opinion as fact. Especially where 'Politics' is involved.
blogengeezer, thanks for your replies (I confess I'm curious as to what you might have said in that second post to have it removed). All the talk about methane and magnetic fields doesn't change one fact - there has been no long term trend in cosmic radiation over the last 50 years. Cosmic ray flux is measured by neutron monitors at ground level so whatever has happened with shifting magnetic fields deflecting cosmic rays, it's happened by the time the cosmic ray flux is measured. Similarly, whatever effect cosmic rays have had on methane (I didn't know that fact, btw, so thanks for the tidbit) is the same 50 years ago as it is now.
And what we see is cosmic radiation has a neat correlation with global temperatures right up until the mid-70's after which temperatures rose and have kept steadily rising while cosmic radiation has been steady.
Well JC, I will start by answering your first 'Curiosity'. You are carrying on a discussion with a basically illiterate 'Chicken Farmer' I have not been formally educated past the early stages. I make mistakes and vanity prevents me from using spell check. A prolific reader of non-fiction, is one my credentials.
Curiousity is a human trait exploited by jihadis. 'Plant two explosive devices'. The first is only to lure curious people and responders to the area. 'The second explosian accomplishes the most Carnage'.
I tend to offer the option of the reader to use the Wiki links. Of course they are not the very best, but what is?
I really got a chuckle out of your phrase "50 years Long Term Trend" in reference to the History of the Earths Climate. (50 years is more like a 'Nano-Second in History, at the longest). I more tend to think in Hundreds, Thousands, and Millions as fairly long term.
Lets start with a fun little Historical read.
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Ice_Age
It does contain the reference to 'Mainstream Science' which I equate with 'Mainstream Media' at times.
As far as the Earths climate, what is 'normal'? No Ice seems to be the Historical Normal, punctuated with at least four major Ice Ages. The last of which, we are still in, by the way. It did start to end about 10,000 years ago. The changes are very rapid Historically, with changes in the realm of 1 to 2 C in the Northern Hemisphere and 3 to 8 C in the southern Hemisphere.
http://Wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Age
Outside of these relatively minor cooling periods there was at least one really cold period.
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth
Or 'slushball' as some prefer to call it. Approximately 850 to 650 million years ago. (why I chuckle at 50 years being long term) It tended to end rapidly as well. Possibly 1000 years. Arguably the start of the 'Cambrian Explosian', Of which we are a minute part of. Thats why we can blog. Isn't it fun JC ? :>)
JC I also noticed a trend that you especially would be most interested in.
The Southern Hemisphere Historically reacts far faster and with much more extreme variation, (the Neophytes would describe it as violent) to Climate Change than the Northern Hemisphere.
The Australian 'Outback', Nay, the entire Continent, has a remarkable and fascinating History of demonstrating the extreme shifts in Climate possible, even in our own times personal observations.
Several reasons are well noted in various publications that I have read. Even the previous links make mention to this fact.
National Geographic as well as even the Public Broadcasting Systems, and the Nature Channels have well documented these Southern Hemisphere, ongoing extremes to our generations interest.
I do definetly look beyond the ever present 'Politically Motivated' narration and study the facts as presented. I, being a 'farmer type' know how to 'cultivate out' the 'weeds', in order for the productive and useful crop to flourish.
I just saw 08 Aug 07, the latest edition of the Gushing Liberal 'Newsweek Magazine'. On the cover is a large picture of the sun. The caption refers to the Sunspot studies previously mentioned. The Liberal Newsweek statement that the detractors of Global Warming are very well funded, hints that the Global Warming Advocates are not. This is quite erroneous. The Advocates for Global Warming are funded beyond dreams. The Liberals and Leftists are funded by the Governments taxpayers that they control, therefore their funding is endless as long as they hold power. The Global Warming sceptics are the people that are funded by free enterprise which is 'the enemy' to the Leftists and the Liberals. The Mainstream Media is proportionatly far heavier Left than Right. The latest squabble about Rupert Murdoch taking over the reins of The Wall Street Journal is causing the Left to have a hemorage. They cannot stand for the Right to have any sort of representation in the Media. The last Global Warming session ending in the past 600 years is never mentioned by the Liberal Left. The Global Cooling in the past 150 years is treated as just the way the world is normally. Nothing could be farther from the truth again. This group seems to have a problem when their 'facts' are debated. The Leftists immediatly use any means to silence the opposite viewpoint. Please use this great internet and read all of the facts and learn your worlds Climate History before making any decisions based on the biased rhetoric of the Leftist agenda. It is just that. A total control Agenda.
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