The North Pole could melt this year

Last Updated: Tuesday, 10 July 2007, 23:00 GMT 00:00 UK

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'No Sun link' to climate change
By Richard Black
BBC Environment Correspondent



Scientists have been measuring the frequency of solar flares
A new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun's output cannot be causing modern-day climate change.

It shows that for the last 20 years, the Sun's output has declined, yet temperatures on Earth have risen.

It also shows that modern temperatures are not determined by the Sun's effect on cosmic rays, as has been claimed.

Writing in the Royal Society's journal Proceedings A, the researchers say cosmic rays may have affected climate in the past, but not the present.

"This should settle the debate," said Mike Lockwood, from the UK's Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, who carried out the new analysis together with Claus Froehlich from the World Radiation Center in Switzerland.

This paper re-enforces the fact that the warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity

Dr Piers Forster
Dr Lockwood initiated the study partially in response to the TV documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, broadcast on Britain's Channel Four earlier this year, which featured the cosmic ray hypothesis.

"All the graphs they showed stopped in about 1980, and I knew why, because things diverged after that," he told the BBC News website.

"You can't just ignore bits of data that you don't like," he said.

Warming trend

The scientists' main approach on this new analysis was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature, which has risen by about 0.4C over the period.


Temperatures have continued rising irrespective of cosmic ray flux
The Sun varies on a cycle of about 11 years between periods of high and low activity.

But that cycle comes on top of longer-term trends; and most of the 20th Century saw a slight but steady increase in solar output.

However, in about 1985, that trend appears to have reversed, with solar output declining.

Yet this period has seen temperatures rise as fast as - if not faster than - any time during the previous 100 years.

"This paper reinforces the fact that the warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment of climate science.

Cosmic relief

The IPCC's February summary report concluded that greenhouse gases were about 13 times more responsible than solar changes for rising global temperatures.

But the organisation was criticised in some quarters for not taking into account the cosmic ray hypothesis, developed by, among others, Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen of the Danish National Space Center.

FEELING THE HEAT
Three theories on how the Sun could be causing climate change


In graphics


Their theory holds that cosmic rays help clouds to form by providing tiny particles around which water vapour can condense. Overall, clouds cool the Earth.

During periods of active solar activity, cosmic rays are partially blocked by the Sun's more intense magnetic field. Cloud formation diminishes, and the Earth warms.

Mike Lockwood's analysis appears to have put a large, probably fatal nail in this intriguing and elegant hypothesis.

He said: "I do think there is a cosmic ray effect on cloud cover. It works in clean maritime air where there isn't much else for water vapour to condense around.

"It might even have had a significant effect on pre-industrial climate; but you cannot apply it to what we're seeing now, because we're in a completely different ball game."

Drs Svensmark and Friis-Christensen could not be reached for comment.

Maybe if you say it enough times it will be true.

Figure 07

Glad you admit that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

Perhaps pumping 8 billion metric tons of it into the atmosphere each year is warming the earth?

Perhaps not...

As United Nations negotiations for the Global Climate Convention convene this month, scientists on the UN's panel of expert advisers are under fire for altering a scientific report. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made headlines with its claim that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." Now there is evidence suggesting that this assessment was driven by politics, and not science.

The IPCC's 1995 report, the final version of which was published in June, is supposed to represent the consensus of world scientific experts regarding the highly controversial issue of global warming. The panel's work is relied upon by Global Climate Convention negotiators who are considering possible curbs on the use of fossil fuels, such as energy taxes. The IPCC's reputation for objectivity rests upon its commitment to balanced scientific opinion arrived at through the process of peer review.

Potential misconduct at the IPCC was recently uncovered by the Global Climate Coalition, an association of oil, coal, and utility companies. In a memorandum to Congress and the White House, the business coalition alerted U.S. officials that the IPCC's final published report had been altered before final publication. Substantial portions of Chapter 8, which discusses the impact of human activities on the earth's climate, had been re-written by one of its authors after contributing scientists had already given their approval. Cautionary references to scientific uncertainty were removed or modified, changes not approved by the reviewers. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, Frederick Seitz called the last-minute editing a "disturbing corruption of the peer review process" which could "deceive policymakers and the public into believing that the scientific evidence shows human activities are causing global warming."

Seitz's remarks set off tremors throughout the scientific community. Several articles about the controversy appeared in the New York Times and Energy Daily, as well as the prestigious journals Science and Nature. The IPCC's Sir John Houghton labeled the charges "appalling," and maintained that the re-write "improved the science." Lead author Ben Santer, an atmospheric scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, denied wrongdoing and claimed that IPCC rules allow modifications "to improve the report's scientific clarity." However, the deletions were more than minor clarifications. Key portions accepted by contributing scientists were later removed or altered without their knowledge. The changes functioned to suppress doubts and to downplay uncertainties about forecasting a human influence on climate. For example, Santer told Science that in a discussion of when scientists will be able attribute climate change to human causes, he removed the phrase "we do not know" because it overstated doubts that human activity can be blamed.

United Nations' experts doctor evidence

Interesting column from your boy Phillip Atkinson....

STR ? THE FREEDOM BLOG Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy

Lmao....this has what to with the AGW myth?

He's one of the contributors to ourcivilization.com.

You are really educating me to all the wing nut websites.

Lmao...

Bang, Bang

Another attempted hit by the infamous Kirk....

Because GD I can't find anything wrong with the facts of the article so we attack the messenger....

It's really not suprising though...

YouTube - Global Warming Hoax

While there isn't 100% correlation between rises and falls(temperature and solar activity), it is pretty damn close. While, CO2 emmissions and temperature are almost completely devoid of any relation at all.

LMAO....LMAO....LMAO....LMAO.....

Wonder who would have more credibility? StopExxon.org(which has a adversial name to begin with) or a leading scientist studying the effects of carbon dioxide? You do realize, humans breathing is also causing global warming correct. Every time you breathe out you expel carbon dioxide from your lungs.
I guess Dr. Ballings is fine huh, since you didn't try to smear his name. Well he concludes the same thing as Idso. So go to foolthefoolsowecanlineourpockets.org and find some attempted smears on him too as well.