« New Mexico Taxpayers Treat Illegals to Free College | Main | Venezuelans Escaping Chavez Head For USA »

The Sun? The sun is what is a big factor in the condition of our climate? What kind of Neo-Con derived Republican shill operation are you trying to push here? Bahh! The Sun.

Well,

if his prediction holds true that the solar winds will abate in 2020 or so, welcome to The Little Ice Age 2.0. If people think warming is bad (which is patently absurd, life thrives in warmer conditions), cooling is gonna SUCK. Hope the G8 countries will be ready, willing and able (in otherwords, they haven't squandered it on the non-issue of warming) to supply grains and other foodstuffs to the 3rd World countries that are gonna be hit with famine.

Look at the bright side Brooklyn. If global cooling starts by 2020 we'll be able to add Global Warming to the long list of ridiculous political scams the left tried to push on us like communist socialism, the welfare state etc... This will proove once and for all in the mind's of all conservatives that anything coming from leftist is a lie.

>>>...unfortunately peak levels significantly squelch incoming comic rays,...

Pity, we could use a good laugh right about now.

Brooklyn, it appears that our rather oddly named "leaders" are doing everything they can to make sure we have food shortages just in time for the cooling to roll around. Honestly, the US making ethanol from corn was bad enough, but if we follow our EU mandated targets for ethanol production using wheat we won't just push up the price of wheat, but become a net importer of something that we used to need to export because there was nowhere to keep the surplus...

The most loathsome example of dhimmitude yet. From Holland:

http://dutchconcerns.blogspot.com/2007/07/bad-news-from-holland.html

What happened to G.????

Is the CIA reprogramming him? I hope they do a better job this time.

Van Helsing, it's interesting you say Svensmark "can correlate sun spot radiation history precisely to cosmic ray levels... to all proven proxies for associated temperature swings". While cosmic rays/sun spots correlate closely with temperature in the past, it's precisely the lack of correlation since the mid-70's which tells us it can't be either the sun or cosmic radiation that is the main driving force in global warming.

For example, Krivova 2003 compared cosmic radiation to temperature and concluded that "between 1970 and 1985 the cosmic ray flux, although still behaving similarly to the temperature, in fact lags it and cannot be the cause of its rise. Thus changes in the cosmic ray flux cannot be responsible for more than 15% of the temperature increase."

Similarly, Usoskin 2005 correlated solar activity to temperature over the past 1150 years and found close correlation until 1975, concluding "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."

Ah, but JC, the first study you linked talks about direct irradience, not sunspots, which are a proxy for the sun's magnetic flux. Irradiance is not in question here; the level of cosmic rays reaching the earth is. The study is based on proxies and models anyway, whereas the cosmic ray theory is based on actual scientific experimentation that has produced positive results. One of the first ruels of science is that experimentation always carries more weight than hypothesis. Proxies carry less weight than direct observation. A model is not a prediction, or even an onservation; it is a guess, whereas actual observation is actual observation. The cosmic ray theory is based on hard facts and experimentation, not models, not proxies and not someone's opinion.

The second study you linked uses datasets from only the northern hemisphere, and uses a combination of proxies and temperature readings from ground stations to determine the temperatures. The northern hemisphere has shown a temperature increase far above that of the southern hemisphere (which is actually going down again), the cause of which is now increasingly likely to be heat effects related to local conditions at temperature/weather stations. Taking these and discounting the southern hemisphere is a bit of bad science, as those souther readings correlate with the sunspot and magnetic flux trends very well.

Archonix, great reply! To answer your questions, the first study (Krivova 2003) does look at cosmic radiation measurements. Eg - it looks at hard empirical data - in fact, the same neutron monitor measurements taken from Climax, Colorado that Svensmark uses.

Re the second study (Usoskin 2005) using northern hemisphere datasets, I recall that in Svensmark's original study on correlating cosmic radiation with temperatures, he also used northern hemisphere datasets. I seem to recall him saying something about the northern hemisphere being more sensitive to solar influence due to the larger landmass. The oceans in the southern hemisphere have a dampening effect that resulted in less correlation with cosmic radiation (and therefore also solar irradiance with anti-correlates with cosmic rays). So I'm guessing that's why studies correlating solar influence with climate tend to focus on northern datasets - unless you're saying Svensmark's cosmic ray research is bad science also.

Bad science may be a strong phrase. :)

As I recall, svensmark didn't simply use observational data to demonstrate his link, he also postulated and then demosntrated a mechanism for cosmic rays to directly affect temperatures by altering cloud formation in a paper published in 2006. These studies don't necessarily refute that experiment (they can't, simply because it hadn't been performed when theyw ere published) but instead focus on trying to demonstrate that there is no link between the sun and temperature, or that there is a link but it somehow magically disappears in recent history. There is a link. Local environmental factors at weather/temperature stations are a much more likely cause of the apparent increase in northern temperatures over the last 20 years.

I believe they've both made a mistake discounting the southern hemisphere data because, whilst there is less wiggle matching, the larger trends are still there. Cosmic radiation has increased which should result in a downward trend in temperatures. In the southern hemisphere this is very easy to see. In the north, the best we get is that temperatures have not continued to rise - they are stable, and they may even be slightly falling but the trend isn't yet obvious. Given the urban heat island effect and the fact that a large number of previously rural weather/temperature stations are now surrounded by urban or suburban "stuff", like concrete and paved roads, this is not so surprising. It would be nice if someone could produce a detailed study of this effect.

Interesting discussion...one thing I've not seen mentioned is the weakening magnetic field and its effect on how much solar wind is deflected/impacted on earth. I'd be interested in knowing what scientists have to say about both the strengthened solar magnetic field and earth's magnetic field having diminished by ~10% in the last century or so and its possible effect on climate change.

Here's a link to an article and the original paper (Svensmark) in case others wish to follow:

http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/global/CREC.html

and an older link to an Israeli whose research echoes Svensmark's:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6270

ManBearPig Teaches New York Behind-the-Times Economist to Love Big Brother .

“Imagine a day when you will go online and buy a pass to drive into any major urban area and the price of your pass will be set by whether you are driving a hybrid or a Hummer the time of day you want to drive, and how much carbon your car trip will emit.”

Here's an article on how the sun's fluctuations may be affecting satellite communication. It looks like there is some overlap on sun research that may be of interest:

http://www.cellular-news.com/story/24931.php