Daily Kos whips up an email campaign against meteorologist who spoke candidly about climate change

Whilst fully supporting Jym Ganahl’s general position, I feel his absolute certainty in stating: “Sunspots—and not carbon emissions—are to blame for the slow warming of the globe, Ganahl said. “It has nothing to do with us.”
“When there are sunspots, like freckles on the sun—dark spots—these are like turning on a furnace and the earth warms.” tends to weaken the overall message he is giving.
I doubt there is such certainty of cause, and am sure I have read Leif Svalgaard here that there is no heat reaching earth from sunspots. In fact my memory is that Leif said sunspots are actually cooler than their surrounds.
It is your own caution in not making absolute statements ~ unless you have documentation ~ here on Watts Up, Anthony, which gives you your authority, and feel we could all gain by Jym and those like him adopting that caution, too.
REPLY: I was uncomfortable with that statement also, but it’s not like he went on-air and delivered this. It is an interview, and having been the subject of more than a few myself, I can also say that reporters often jot down notes, and the output doesn’t always match the input. Just look at the caption the reporter used for the photo: “some kind of glacier”, yeah sure. The Kos Kids want to hassle his boss and demand that another view be broadcast, what they miss is that the General Manager can tell them all to go take a hike, because FCC equal time rules don’t apply in this situation at all. – Anthony

We need more people like Jym Ganahl who are prepared to speak out and get the general public thinking for themselves. Does “general public thinking” count as an oxymoron?
I have emailed R. Rogola at NBC 4, offering my support for Jym’s views and suggesting a presidential style debate; plus, of course, suggesting they come to your website and see the evedence themselves.
Keep up the good work.

…with peer-reviewed climatologists…
Peer-review, contrary to popular belief, is not a quality control system by modern standards. At best it’s a sanity check of the top level document, without any review of the lower level data or any of the standard top level review items.

Roger Carr (22:39:21) :
I think Leif has been saying that the difference of energy output between the solar maxima and minima in sunspots is too small to account for the heating observed in the twentieth century, not that it does not exist.
I think the spots are cooler than the average sun surface , but the accompanying aura is warmer enough to make the difference be positive.
There is also the cosmic ray theory which, as far as I am concerned still has to be proven, but it also connects sun magnetic activity ( which is what sunspots are) with albedo and therefore cooling/heating.

Heidi Cullen and the like are the very people that vehemently defend freedom of speech. But like most (bad) leftwingers how espouse tolerance, they are only tolerant if you share their views.

Sunspots—and not carbon emissions—are to blame for the slow warming of the globe, Ganahl said. “It has nothing to do with us.”
“When there are sunspots, like freckles on the sun—dark spots—these are like turning on a furnace and the earth warms. When there are no sunspots, it is like the furnace is in standby and the earth cools.
And he expects to be taken seriously with drivel like this?!!

We’ve had one or two AGW advocates pounce on the horrendous bush fires that have hit Victoria in Australia, as evidence of ‘more extreme weather events’ due to global warming. We can still see smoke coming from the hills to the north of where we live. Only two weeks ago we visited a couple of the small towns that are no longer there. Poor people. At least some of the media here is being more objective and remiding us that extreme events are part of nature, and not to forget the human suffering involved.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25038325-11949,00.html

Re the ferocious forest fires in OZ… I believe that these fires are not caused by AGW, but actually by sick and insane people with matches or cigarette lighters deliberately setting fire to the kind of tinderbox dry bush that forms in every Oz heatwave. Yup, Humans are to blame for these fires, but because of insanity with matches, rather than the mass use of SUVs.

Mary H:
You seem to want to be taken seriously about what you say!

I sent the following email to the station (CC to Jym Ganahl): Dear Sir(s),
With regard to Jym Ganahl’s recent YouTube video posted Jan. 23. in which he talks about the global warming hoax, he needs to be commended for his bravery in standing up to the AGW/CC behemoth in stating the plain truth. I urge you to send him to the upcoming International Conference on Climate Change in New York City March 8-10, 2009 so that he can learn even more about our climate, further enabling him to impart that knowledge to his viewers and to others. Thank you.
Bruce Cobb
Climate Realist
Oh, wait, that’s the “wrong” type of climate change conference. Oops.

Seems there are a lot of people persuaded by one man…I have no doubt the Sun is the driver of our climate. Its not rocket science.
The Sun has driven our climate on a constant basis as can be seen in the 11000 year 14C graph. There has been a lot of credible work in this area, some science is making a lot of headway.

Just when did the normal practice of scientific debate, theorizing and quantification descend to the semi-religious concept of “deniers” and “believers”. These are sad and dark times for science.
Jym Ganahl – I will disagree with your arguement on the role of sunspots, but thank you for stepping out and clearly stating your objective view and concerns about where this AGW scam is taking us. Thank you for not feeding at the sheep trough.

I don’t have time to follow all this in detail but I seem to remember that if you look at correlation alone there is a good one between sunspot activity and temperature change up and down. Much better than CO2 concentration. Am I right? Sorry for being so lazy and not providing a proper argument. If this is true then we should be looking at the sun for answers. There are some cosmic ray theories, aren’t there but not proven.

“And he expects to be taken seriously with drivel like this?!!”
Mary- Try looking in a mirror, whilst saying that carbon dioxide is going to cause catastrophic warming.
It sounds and looks much the same- drivel

Somewhat OT, but in a similar vein, the Alaska Wilderness League is looking for the youth of America (20’s and under) to submit their videos highlighting their concerns for Polar Bears and climate change in general in their “2020 Vision for the Future of America’s Arctic to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill”. They exhort young videographers to “Let your creative juices run wild for the wild”.
Yes indeed. Never mind science, just keep the hype, propaganda, and alarmism alive. While they are at it, they really should be doing something about all this very dangerous dihydrogen monoxide that is everywhere, and which kills thousands every year.

I thought this line underneath the picture of the guy standing probably next to some frozen up fountain near an UHI of all rather hilarious:
Be afraid of the sun, not carbon: Ganahl, seen here with what appears to be some sort of glacier, doesn’t buy the hype
Now the analytical skill of TV meteorologists has reached a new height.
Thank you for this chuckle Anthony… a Glacier 😀

Mary Hinge (01:23:31) :
And he expects to be taken seriously with drivel like this?!!
Do you expect to be taken seriously when you offer zero specific counter points? Just name calling, are we Mary? Seriously.
I’ll certainly be calling and e-mailing my support for Ganahl in hopes that the bully tatics of the AGW crowd are diminished just a tad.

Greg Goodknight:
Thanks for the nutshell version. An undervalued talent.

Ken Hall (03:09:40) :
Re the ferocious forest fires in OZ… I believe that these fires are not caused by AGW, but actually by sick and insane people with matches or cigarette lighters deliberately setting fire to the kind of tinderbox dry bush that forms in every Oz heatwave. Yup, Humans are to blame for these fires, but because of insanity with matches, rather than the mass use of SUVs.

Don’t forget the ‘environmentalists’ who oppose cutting away the dead wood. Those people are causing mismanagement of forests.
Nature’s way of cleaning up is through wildfires. So which is better – controlled burning, controlled cutting and thinning or out of control fires?
BTW: I realize these fires may have been deliberately set, but they certainly weren’t done in order to better manage the forests!

As someone with a simple engineer’s brain, I was told to look upon the sunspots on the sun as an indicator of activity level, rather like a pot of boiling water, the bubbles furiously appearing suggest frantic activity within the body of water caused by heat. Remove the heat & the bubbles die away, although whilst cooling the occasional small bubble still appears! This was explained to me by scientist I worked with at Rutherford Laboratory many years ago, although I hasten to add there was no discussion about Global Warming as it didn’t really exist back then in 1982 as it hadn’t been invented. Surely the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence? I thus expect to see reports in the not too distant future that the Martian icecap is growing, & that other planets/moons previously identified as warming, are cooling. It will be interesting to see what happens.
In light of recent weather events I believe the Met Office should be taken to task over its failure to “predict”, “project”, or even “forecast” the extreme weather we have endured of late & may well still do. They consume vast amounts of taxpayers’ money & the whole idea of greater investment super computers was to improve the long-term weather forecasting. It appears that the long-term forecast is A, & in the short term lots of B keeps happening!
On the propaganda issue, the sober thinking environmentalists, i.e. those who probably won’t resort to violence & direct action of any kind, need to be offered a way out of their predicament without the huge loss of face that would ensue if not, that would simply make them more resistant to common sense thought processes & drag the whole thing out for longer. Some people will not be able to stand the humiliation.

It never ceases to amaze me that the AGW Alarmists believe they have a Divine Right to the truth on this subject and label everyone else as ‘Deniers’.
Yet their arguments are based upon flaky science which claims to support their projections. However, projections and their allies, predictions, simply support theories and they remain theories until science proves them as factual (OR NOT).
At the same time, they point derisive fingers at those who argue against them and try to rubbish the scientific facts which have proved the cyclical nature of natural climate change over millions of years!
If the two arguments were tested in a court of law, where ONLY facts are permitted in evidence, the AGW arguments would be thrown out.
So, who are the true ‘Deniers’?

“I doubt there is such certainty of cause, and am sure I have read Leif Svalgaard here that there is no heat reaching earth from sunspots. In fact my memory is that Leif said sunspots are actually cooler than their surrounds”
At the risk of being overly pendantic, the Solar OUTPUT is NOT the question.
It is the complex connection between Solar wind, shielding of cosmic rays hitting the stratosphere and the formation of Cirrus clouds, finally the cascade all the way down to stratus clouds. This cause cycling change in the overall albedo because of reflection from the clouds, which has the Sun controlling the overall ENERGY INPUT and OUTPUT from the Earth. (Temperature is SUCH a canard, drives me nuts.)
If we can clear this up, and point out that those who have this “confusion” about the mechanism, and think the “Sun Controls” people are saying the SOLAR OUTPUT controls, we have gotten somewhere.
Alas, it seems there is some great confusion on this matter.
I may add, that on both sides of the issue, using the O18/016 ratio in stalagtites/mites or ice cores as a proxy for “Global Temperature” has me CLIMBING THE WALLS! It is NOT, repeat NOT a proxy for Global Temperature.
It is ONLY a record of the number of thunderstorms in costal areas. (Geologists and Oceanographers have been using these ratios to trace certain ocean currents for some numbers of years.) It is perhaps a proxy for input/output numbers on atmospheric energy (as a total, integrated). Darn, there I go again, overly technical.
M.H.

Thanks M.H. for saving me the time and cycberspace. btw, stratosphereic warming, loosening Artic cold fronts on the lower latitudes (-50 new all time record low confirmed in Maine… ?) are also a consequence of the higher cosmic ray incidence caused by the lower solar flux/wind and lack of Sunspots)
The funny thing about Jym Ganahl’s myopic view is that (it would appear) that for the next 3 solar cycles, Jym will ‘prove’ to be prescient, shessh ;)) Then, of course, the higher CO2 levels will themselves prove to be forcing and delay the next ice age some, while enhancing harvests ;))

Leif Svalgaard,
The problem with the deniers of solar influence is they keep looking for solar scimitars when it’s solar scalpels that are influencing the balance of the climate.
No, there hadn’t been much increase in the sun’s magnetic field since the 50’s, but Dr. Solanki’s work showed that the sun’s high energy started before the 50’s, bringing it to a level that was unequalled for the the past 8000 years, and not exceeded since about 11,000 years ago. Solanki is (or at least was and I assume still is) an AGW proponent, so he wasn’t trying to prove the GCR point at all. World temperatures are cumulative and slow moving and it takes time to reach a new equilibrium.
And, over the past 50 years, one British study (again, cited in the Svensmark Cosmoclimatology paper) reviewing weather and neutron flux records found about a 17% higher chance of overcast clouds on high cosmic ray days than on low. High energy neutron flux, being without charge, is not a proxy for solar magnetism but would seem to be a weak proxy for solar wind and the existence of GCR.
Only time will tell if the recent relative crash of solar magnetic energy will have the effect of making winters colder. Or has already made this one colder.

The politics is on the AGW warmists side. They’re the ones who call out the lynch mobs and resort to the name-calling.

Dishman (00:13:30) :
…with peer-reviewed climatologists…
Peer-review, contrary to popular belief, is not a quality control system by modern standards. At best it’s a sanity check of the top level document, without any review of the lower level data or any of the standard top level review items.

Not only as you point out, but some anonymous peer reviewers are anything but impartial in their reviews. I have read reviews which include ad hominem attacks as well as (apparently) politically inspired comments.
I suspect that if the reviewer were not anonymous and had to put his/her name to the review, he/she might tend to be a bit more careful and impartial.

So the Daily Kos is now the arbiter of the 1st Amendment?

Ganahl’s misinformation and the climate change deniers don’t deserve an opportunity to spread their propaganda:

Really disgusting, regardless of whether Ganahl’s message is “right” or not.
Regardless of what Cullen says, I have NEVER heard a TV meteorologist say anything against AGW on-air. What they say on their own time is their own business. You can disagree with it, and make your own public statement about it, but denying them their right to say it is unconstitutional.

And I doubt there’s anything political about multiturdes of scientists,

ROTFL, great typo!

Leif Svalgaard
Leif, what part of the Earth’s climate works independent of the radiant energy from the Sun beside the Earth’s rotational energy and the internal heat energy?

Leif Svalgaard (08:12:55) :
“…it is clear that the Sun is not a major climate driver.”
In the absense of the Sun, what is the major climate driver?

Leif Svalgaard
Again apologies for troubling you with basic questions that you have no doubt answered before but could yoy answer the following please:
Do you accept that, prima facie, there could be a correlation between geomagnetic activity and earth climate over the last ~150years as per the attached graph below?
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/GEOMAG/image/aastar07.jpg

Al Gore is scheduled to speak this coming weekend at the meeting of the AAAS and AAPT. Why exactly he would be there except as a bad example I don’t know. I do know I decided to cancel my plans to go as a result.
The popularizing of pseudo science is not what AAAS should be doing. Am I the only one who decided to vote with my feet on this issue? If not let your organizations know.

Nick Yates (02:52:05) :
We’ve had one or two AGW advocates pounce on the horrendous bush fires that have hit Victoria in Australia, as evidence of ‘more extreme weather events’ due to global warming. We can still see smoke coming from the hills to the north of where we live. Only two weeks ago we visited a couple of the small towns that are no longer there. Poor people. At least some of the media here is being more objective and remiding us that extreme events are part of nature, and not to forget the human suffering involved.
Right, Nick – and we’ve had one or two articles on this blog talking about how cold it is in Maine or wherever.

jeez (13:56:30) :
The post I linked to was put up after a jury had found the defendants not guilty. Therefore, your statement that Hansen was “advocating vandalism” is in conflict with the findings of the jury. Besides which, Hansen made no statement one way or the other at the trial as to whether he advocated the defendants actions or not – he testified as a witness to the effects of climate change as he understood them.
Regarding testifying as to ones views ‘on the taxpayers’ clock’, you are surely aware that there are many others paid by the public who have testified to the opposite intent? And are you really arguing that a defendant may not call upon an expert witness because that witness happens to be employed by the state rather than prtivately? I would guess that it’s highly likely that a high proportion or even the majority of expert witnesses who testify at trials are employed by the state. Would you have such testimony prohibited?
I don’t like witch-hunting on either side. I don’t like the Kos’s reaction to this, but I also don’t like what appears to me to be easy double standards. Hansen testified, and if in any way he behaved improperly then that is a matter for his employers and not a matter for those who didn’t like the jury’s verdict to call for his job. By the same token, if Ganahl ever acts improperly (which I don’t for an instant suggest he has) then that is also a matter for his employers. I trust that both sets of employers will respect a person’s right to express their honest views when called upon to do so.

Leif Svalgaard,
While I only have license to B.S. in Physics, I find the letter to Nature by Solanki to be fairly definitive:
http://cc.oulu.fi/%7Eusoskin/personal/nature02995.pdf
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=25538
I don’t know if the difference in solar activity is “exceptional” compared to the period formerly known as the Medieval Climate Optimum, but it does seem to be higher.
While your unpublished research is interesting, the reasons Solanki has to be given more credence include the elimination of such things as definitions of sunspot numbers, especially since many of the sunspots of the past year probably would not even have been observable in some past centuries.
BTW, I found and read your paper on sorting algorithms and also found your very impressive work resume. The industry has changed greatly in the past 40 years, and it is virtually impossible for kids starting out to learn software on the job without any academic credentials, a shame to have that path now blocked. When I started out in the 70’s it was not unusual to run into folks without applicable degrees, and even with a degree in Physics it wasn’t a slam dunk to get past HR folks who could pattern match degree titles but little else.

Simon,
We are still free to criticisize Hansen and the other lords of AGW- so far.
Implying that it is OK for a scientist to not only call for the jailing of those who disagree with him, but who defends the criminal acts of others, is bad enough.
Asserting that we should not be free to comment on Hansen’s all too public behavior as he pursues and other aspects of his agenda is even worse.
Unless you agree with Hansen that disagreement on AGW is in fact a criminal offense.

hunter (15:03:15) :
Simon,
We are still free to criticisize Hansen and the other lords of AGW- so far.
Indeed so. I am interested in criticisms of his science and, frankly, disgusted by unproven defamations of his character.
Implying that it is OK for a scientist to not only call for the jailing of those who disagree with him
That is a misrepresentation. Roy Spencer disagrees with him, Richard Lindzen disagrees with him, and so on. He has called for no such thing. He has accused some of cynical misrepresentation in pursuit of self-interest, which does not translate as a matter of disagreeing with his views. Either he is right or he is wrong – if wrong, then he should face the consequences of defamation, just as all those here who engage in defamation should face such consequences if they are wrong. Do we agree?
but who defends the criminal acts of others, is bad enough.
The jury found the defendants not guilty. Therefore their acts were not criminal. You may have no respect for my country’s legal process, but I do. Your assertion that their acts were criminal in the face of the findings of a trial which, I presume, you did not attend, is highly contemptuous. But regardless, let us imagine that the defendants had been found to be guilty of criminal acts. This makes no difference. Hansen testified as to the effects of climate change, which he was called upon to do, he made no testimony as to a judgment on the acts of the defendants. The jury decided that, not him.
Asserting that we should not be free to comment on Hansen’s all too public behavior as he pursues and other aspects of his agenda is even worse.
I have made no such assertion – I have simply pointed out the hypocrisy of complaining about one witch-hunt whilst enthusiastically pursuing another.
Unless you agree with Hansen that disagreement on AGW is in fact a criminal offense.
I could hardly agree with something that Hansen has not said, and I certainly don’t agree with your distortion of what he has said.

nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (15:01:40) :
“More SC23 spots in January than SC24 spots and according to solarcycle24.com perhaps a new SC23 spot forming now….I am not so sure we can say SC24 has taken over yet.”
Now they are claiming it has been numbered. I don’t have a strong enough magnifying glass to see it. Kevin might be right on when he said “you guessed it”.
“Sunspot 1012
02/11/2009 by Kevin VE3EN at 23:30
Comment on Message Board
Sunspot 1012 was numbered today and is located towards the eastern limb. It is low in latitude and its magnetic signature indicates it is a Cycle 23 sunspot. Yesterday it produced a small B1 flare. How many days was it since the previous sunspot? You guessed it… 23.”
http://www.solarcycle24.com/

Leif Svalgaard (14:46:39) :
You are somewhat silly here as you know well [or should after visiting this blog] that there are many factors involved [e.g. ocean circulation]. As for the major climate tugger, it is not the Sun, but the planets that tug on the Earth’s orbit creating glaciations. Additionally, how about a good size impact for effect? Even if all these other effects only shuffle around energy originally coming from the Sun, we would still call that shuffle [i.e. the variations on top of the baseline] ‘climate’ if slow enough.
————————————————————
I am unfamiliar with meaning of climate tugger, so I can not comment.
Silly me for believing that the Sun’s gravitational “tug” on the Earth maintains the Earth in its orbit around the Sun.
Silly me for believing that the Sun does provide the energy that sustains life on Earth.
Silly me for believing that the Sun is the predominate driver of climate on Earth, apparently a view with which you agree judging by your saying “Even if all these other effects only shuffle around energy originally coming from the Sun.”
I dare say an impact would heat things up, but that is not a cyclical event as far as astronomical cycles are known. It is far more likely that the Yellowstone Caldera would burp and cover the neighborhood with ash.
I visit this blog several times daily and am well aware of the many factors discussed. Besides those phenomena driven by the Earth’s rotation the remainder seem to be related to the Sun or Cosmic Rays. My concern is, and always will be, that the global warming/climate change is not by man-made CO2 emissions. That is the only climate issue that will have a long term detrimental economic and political effect on the futures of my great grandchildren.
I generally avoid the Ad Hominem.

So what are the official sunspot numbers for January 2009?, I have read in forums that SC23 spots out numbered SC24?
BTW… its official we have another SC23 spot, further backing up David Archibald’s statements.

Black Saturday: The Sequel by Steve Pyne http://tinyurl.com/byw5s7
… But even heat waves do not kindle fires of themselves, and cyclonic winds do not drive fire in the same way they do storm surges. Fire is not a physical substance: it is a reaction. It feeds on the vegetation, and whatever climatic forces exist must be integrated into that combustible biomass. Fire, that is, synthesizes its surroundings. Understand its setting, and you understand fire. Control that setting, and you control fire.
Green ideas must take blame for deathsby Miranda Devine, Sydney Morning Herald, February 12, 2009 http://tinyurl.com/db8q8z
It wasn’t climate change which killed as many as 300 people in Victoria last weekend. It wasn’t arsonists. It was the unstoppable intensity of a bushfire, turbo-charged by huge quantities of ground fuel which had been allowed to accumulate over years of drought. It was the power of green ideology over government to oppose attempts to reduce fuel hazards before a megafire erupts, and which prevents landholders from clearing vegetation to protect themselves.
Environmental Policies Kill – Again! by Iain Murray, Competitive Enterprise Institute, February 11, 2009 http://tinyurl.com/c6tzzy
… It’s called bushfire season for a reason: the bush catches fire. If you want to reduce the effects, you cut back the bush. Policies that stop this are criminally dangerous.
Fuelish in the Land of Oz by Mike Dubrasich, W.I.S.E. http://tinyurl.com/a9paff
For the last 40,000 years (at least, some say 60,000) the residents of Australia have been “burning off the bush.” Anthropogenic fire was perfected in Australia, if not invented there. … Tackling climate change, however, will not do diddly to prevent bushfires. The climate has changed, dramatically, over the the last 40,000 to 60,000 years, yet Aussie bush fires have persisted throughout all those hoary millennia.
Phil Cheney. 2008. Can forestry manage bushfires in the future? Australian Forestry 2008 Vol. 71 No. 1 pp. 1–2 http://tinyurl.com/a9paff
If the trend in Victoria extends elsewhere and fire management is placed it in the hands of the politicians and their emergency services organisations that focus on suppression by back-burning from strategic firebreaks, we can expect that large areas will be burnt severely in summer, perpetuating the myth of megafires.
Rather than set up the organisation and training for an effective prescribed burning program, it is far easier, I guess, to attribute the bushfires to God and climate change.

Question – if the Sun is less 0.1% responsible for climate, then if we changed our star from a yellow one to say a white dwarf would our climate remain the same? What about a Red Giant (assuming our distance was maintained)?

Greg Goodknight (08:01:51) :
Geochemist Jan Veizer had made a determination of the ocean’s temperatures over the 550 million year Phanerozoic, but it didn’t correlate with CO2 or anything else he knew of and was close to abandoning his line of research when astrophysicist Nir Shaviv noticed that Veizer’s temperatures pretty much matched his research into our solar system’s orbit around the galaxy. Galactic cosmic ray flux correlates well with the great temperature swings, from hot house to snowball Earth. The galactic cosmic ray connection with clouds is a far more plausible explanation for 20th century warming than CO2.
It was Svensmark’s citation of Shaviv & Veizer (2003) in his Cosmoclimatology article that was my epiphany: when two completely separate physical sciences arrive at the same point, one should take note.
IT SHOULD BE!!!!! but the truth is often over looked. another co2 dr pepper please.

Leif Svalgaard – As a non-scientist with some scientific education in my two degrees I find some of this to very confusing.
So, if the Sun was to suddenly go dark, are you saying the effect on our climate would be minimal? I know most life would perish because the Sun drives photosynthesis which supplies most of the energy to most living things. Does this mean the planet’s overall temperature would remain at liveable levels without the Sun? If so, ingenious humans would be able to use technology to maintain plant life thru artificial illumination. We could reside in contained habitats, growing food, while venturing outdoors when need be (with flashlights, of course) without concern for declining temperatures or skin cancer.
Despite all you say about the planet’s interior, tides, etc. , when I’m outdoors on a sunny day in July visiting South Florida, I get the unscientific perception that somehow the Sun is heating things up. I guess I must be wrong.

Ken Hall (03:09:40) wrote: “Re the ferocious forest fires in OZ… I believe that these fires are not caused by AGW, but actually by sick and insane people with matches…”
You must qualify that statement with some Ken. There is hysteria abroad regarding these fires. It appears arson may be the cause in some, but not in others, and there were many, many fires in this three-day period.
Note, also, that going back as far as 1851, Victoria has recorded major bushfires, aka wildfires, of massive destruction.

re svalgaard: I tend to disagree with his views but I would have to concede that he would know much more about this than I would after all he has published in this area and he is not a fanatic about anything he simply describes what he has seen and learned. However.. this little snippet from him (above)
“If I read the Pavlakis paper you cite correctly, they find that 7 months before El Nino, the clouds have cleared and more sunlight reaches the applicable equatorial region, leading to several degrees heating. I’m not sure [don’t know – but wouldn’t think so] that the global ratio applies locally to that region.”
In any way this is a concession that yes the sun does influence climate “indirectly” (my quotes) (by heating that region a few degrees ect” ), a bit of nitpicking. Anyway I admire his tenacity to all the attacks he gets from us fellows and gals. It is as many bloggers have said, a combination of solar activity that neither can be shown or proved or dissproved at this time (which is his point I do believe) LOL

The sun(and maybe Jupiter) tugs at the earth, it holds it in orbit and every other planet in our solar system. It even pulls in other passerby, including our own moon that faces the sun and pulls away 1cm a year.
No sun= no life,no earth. Just a frozen dirty blob busted up from collisions in it’s own solar system like our poor demoted planets/debree at the edge of our heliosphere. Maybe busting off as a projectile to seed another hospitable young solar system coming up behind us in the big galactic pinwheel we’ve been released from. We are entering the outskirts of our milky way. A cold energy(sun) draining area away from our birth in this galaxy. No matter how you slice it we will be cast out, getting colder, as our mother sun burns out.

A cycle 23 spot has come up on the east.

Leif Svalgaard (21:28:20) :
I am unfamiliar with meaning of climate tugger, so I can not comment.
You only pretend to be unfamiliar. You have undoubtedly heard about Milankovich Cycles of glaciations. These are caused by the planets tugging gently at the Earth and altering its orbital parameters.
There is a good study on this
SUCCESSIVE REFINEMENTS IN LONG-TERM
INTEGRATIONS OF PLANETARY ORBITS
F. Varadi et al
ABSTRACT
We report on accurate, long-term numerical simulations of the orbits of the
major planets in our solar system. The equations of motion are directly integrated
by a Stormer multi-step scheme, which is optimized to reduce round-o
errors. The physical models are successively rened to include corrections due to
general relativity and the nite size of the lunar orbit. In one case, the Earth{
Moon system is resolved as two separate bodies and the results are compared
to those based on analytically averaging the lunar orbit. Through this comparison,
a better analytical model is obtained. The computed orbits are in good
agreement with those of previous studies for the past ve million years but not
for earlier times. The inner planets exhibit chaotic behavior with a Lyapunov
time of exponential separation of nearby orbits equal to about 4 million years.
Modeling uncertainties and chaos in the inner solar system restrict the accuracy
of the computations beyond the past 50 million years. We do not observe marked
chaos in the motion of the Jovian planets in our 90-million year integration, and
infer that the Lyapunov time for those planets is at least 30 million years.”
Interesting last sentence.Brings up thoughts on Nemesis.

????????
Despite all you say about the planet’s interior, tides, etc. , when I’m outdoors on a sunny day in July visiting South Florida, I get the unscientific perception that somehow the Sun is heating things up. I guess I must be wrong.
Leif Svalgaard
Perhaps NASA should just hire you to go outside now and then rather than sending up expensive spacecraft to measure the Sun’s heat…
Leif, So why waist Billions of dollars on stereo, soho,etc. when the sun changes less than 0.00000000001% …. WHY? DR. WHY?
Perhaps NASA should just go outside now and then rather than sending up expensive spacecraft!!!!!!!!!!!!

On the topic of notable climate sceptics, please don’t forget the current EU president, Vaclav Klaus! He is a constant irritant to alarmists. – idlex
re are other alarmists and doomsayers that need to receive their share of irritation, namely those whoe are trying to get you to believe we’ll all freeze to death because of too few sunspots. – Leif Svalgaard
Klaus is a global warming sceptic, and asks that alternative theories be considered. That seems quite reasonable to me. But I’ve yet to read anything in which Klaus has pinned his colours to the Svensmark or Fairbridge or Landscheidt theories.
I hope that I’m as sceptical of Svensmark and Landscheidt as I am of AGW. The missing piece of Svensmark is the cosmic-rays-form-clouds idea, as far as I can see (not the Earth’s albedo). And Landscheidt was indeed an astrologer, which sorta queers things a bit…
Thanks for your other advice. I’ll take a look.

Ah yes, the Gatekeepers that are the peer-reviewed scientists. Rest assured they will look out for their own while at the same time keep any modicum of sense out of room. I had an hour long conversation with my ecology professor, vehemently defending my position that global warming is nothing more than a global power grab facilitated by those who would let themselves be led so willingly. I showed him satellite pictures of the frozen polar sea ice and temperature data that supported my positions. Here is the quote he emailed me the next morning. “Thanks for this, but as I said I’m skeptical of any such claims–verbal or visual–that aren’t tied to some type of published measurement or record.” Meaning, peer reviewed. Then he called me a global warming denier. That’s when I reached nirvana. But I’m sure my grade is hosed now.

“Before the Sun burns out, the Earth will have been burned to a crisp as the Sun late in life swells up and increases it luminosity thousands of times.”
We are but molten slag or more important, gas-liquid-solid chromatography, like distilling alcohol. Different elements/gases are released at different temperatures and pressures from the sun to create our earth.
abstract- I believe earth and Venus were once swirling side be side vortexes at the beginning .
Both spinning a reverse to each other like out at the mouth of a river and then spinning for a billion years, like sleeping YOYO’s giving birth to our moon.
Questions,
How will the sun gain energy at it’s last dying million years?
How could we get crisped spinning into a dead sun, does the sun get a more magnetic pull as it gets older?
Lets go ask poor Pluto.
Dying stars gaining energy or even being able to attract orbiting objects after losing it’s magnetic control doesn’t make sense to me, it can’t even keep Pluto in it’s orbit. lol ! ; )
Collapsing stars, blackholes, dark matter,etc. are but mental masturbation for smart folks, like other hypotheses of a big bang or string theory. It’s but science fiction.

idlex (22:59:22) :
And Landscheidt was indeed an astrologer, which sorta queers things a bit…
Perhaps you should inform yourself before passing judgment. May I suggest you start here….. allow yourself a couple of days.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/

Leif,
Just come out and say it- Is CO2 in your opinion a greater climate driver than solar activity?
The answer is going to unfold in the years ahead. But I’d to know your answer now.

Michael D Smith (04:06:32) :
Thanks Michael, I am not sure Anthony would use my material in a guest article, although I would be happy to have my theory cross examined by the more than capable intellects (mostly) on this blog. This area of science is seen on the fringe at present, but I am happy to wait, the Grand Minimum is not far away.

Had a return email from Jym in response to my email of support. He has heard from people in 12 countries and says “that has amazed and stunned me.
I am grateful for the support – so much. Thanks”
Nice job WUWTers!

Leif Svalgaard (08:12:55) :
The “It’s the Sun, stupid” attitude is just as dogmatic and dangerous as the AGW propagit. While there may be [but not generally accepted – after 400 years of claims] a slight [0.1 degree] solar component in the Earth’s temperature, it is clear that the Sun is not a major climate driver.
anna v (20:48:37) :
Let us make the analogy of an open pot of water on the fire. The sun is the heating pad and after a while the only “climate” in the pot is “boiling”. Suppose the thermostat is kept just below the boiling point. There will be currents in the pot, water circulating , ready to bubble but not enough. Put a cover on. The water starts boiling. What changed the pot climate? The heating pad? The heating pad heats steadily, but we get a drastic change in the “climate” of the pot because of the cover and the changes in pressure/temperature it induces.
Anna V,
I appreciate the explanation. It clears things up a great deal. But when Leif said the heating pad (Sun) is not a major climate driver, it appears to mean that the Sun is not a factor.

Ed Scott (17:06:55) :
I am unfamiliar with meaning of climate tugger, so I can not comment.
You only pretend to be unfamiliar. You have undoubtedly heard about Milankovich Cycles of glaciations. These are caused by the planets tugging gently at the Earth and altering its orbital parameters.
Leif, silly you. I thought that you knew that the dynamic interaction between bodies in the Universe is commonly referred to as gravitation. I guess not.
I posted an article on this forum concerning the Malinkovich Cycles and suggested the possible extension of analogous cycles of the Solar System with regard to the Milky Way Galaxy.
Silly me for believing that the Sun’s gravitational “tug” on the Earth maintains the Earth in its orbit around the Sun.
Silly me for believing that the Sun does provide the energy that sustains life on Earth.
Silly me for believing that the Sun is the predominate driver of climate on Earth, apparently a view with which you agree judging by your saying “Even if all these other effects only shuffle around energy originally coming from the Sun.”
Yes, indeed, silly, if you believe that these things have anything to do with the climate.
I have heard that the definition of climate is the weather averaged over a long period of time. Climate is also dependent on latitude, elevation, ocean influence, continental atmospheric effect and terrain (mountains; hills). So, the Sun’s orbit around the Sun has nothing to do with climate? The Sun’s radiant energy has no effect on the Earth’s climate? The logical assumption is, therefore, the Sun has nothing to with weather.
My concern is, and always will be, that the global warming/climate change is not by man-made CO2 emissions. That is the only climate issue that will have a long term detrimental economic and political effect on the futures of my great grandchildren.
So, you are saying that the solar effects will have a long term detrimental economic and political effect on the futures of my great grandchildren and AGW will not. Well, if solar cooling is really coming, we better do something about it, like try to increase AGW if we possibly can.
A clever attempt at a straw-man and a deliberate misinterpretation of what I wrote (the global warming/climate change is NOT by man-made CO2 emissions). I said nothing about long-term solar effects and nothing about solar cooling. When I write or speak I do not need assistance, yet. (:-)

It is my understanding that the reason for different climates on Earth is mainly due to Earth’s obliquity and to a lesser extent Earth’s wobble and the slight changes in eccentricity of the orbit. These factors affect the solar isolation at different points of the Earth’s surface which gives us our seasons and climate. Then you must add or subtract the effects of albedo changes due to various reasons. Through all this the Sun itself doesn’t change very much so I think I understand where Leif is coming from. But then again, maybe I don’t.

Leif Svalgaard (10:06:01)
So, the Earth’s orbit around the Sun has nothing to do with climate? The Sun’s radiant energy has no effect on the Earth’s climate? The logical assumption is, therefore, the Sun has nothing to with weather.
I think your statement is an accurate assessment of the facts.
You have added absurdity to your silliness.
Since you seem to be a solar enthusiast, I assumed that you consider the Sun to be the cause of climate change, hence my statement.
You assume incorrectly, as you are prone to do, about my enthusiasm and I have duly noted that you are again putting words in my mouth, so to speak, by saying that I consider the Sun to be the cause of climate change. There is a difference between effect and change.
“…the climate change that IS the result of man-made emissions.” No. Circle the block again.
Your arguments are circular, in addition to your proclivity for inventing straw-men. (:-)

I’m glad I found out the Sun has no effect on the Earths climate reading this thread. This means that the chemical bonds which hold together the carbon we burn which cause global warming are manmade too. It’s the extraterestrial carbon atom that’s to blame. Ban the carbon atom.

Leif Svalgaard (13:46:40) :
Here is my version. The solar storms can create large dB/dt [induction] in very localized regions. In the presence of suitable conductors [e.g. East-West power lines] very large currents results which melts transformers etc. It is not an energy question.
large dB/dt [induction] very large currents results which melts transformers etc.
I think we have solved the energy crisis! It dose not take power to make induction in wire to make electric (power) for homes and industry.
This is exactingly the circular logic that will kill our society.
BTW it takes large amounts of power to induce current into wire.

I am so glad I returned to this thread; I was hungry for more discussion re the sun’s influence on earth and the sun’s part in the chaos that is earth’s weather and climate. What have I learned? Well, Leif, you are a real spoil-sport to our (my) desire to make the sun the “driver” (whatever that means). You hold our feet to the fire regarding thinking clearly with ALL the evidence. Thanks. I am working at the task, but you do not make it easy. And I hope some of your analysis is wrong because it is so counter-intuitive. After all, we appear to live on a still, flat earth.

BTW it takes large amounts of power to induce current into wire.
No. A few TeraWatt are enough.
Science humor is great…….

Leif
I accept that you think that cyclic changes in the sun do not affect the climate significantly. Do you think that human CO2 emissions do or will affect the climate?

“but I certainly don’t accept the unsubstantiated insinuations that are regularly promulgated on this site that he is himself engaged in deliberate distortion. I think I should leave the matter there for now.”
The fossil record tells us that for a few hundred million years the Earth had 3-5 times more CO2 and 5-10C more temperature during which time the biosphere was extremely healthy.
Any idea that rising CO2 or temperature is bad for the Earth is obviously and blatantly wrong in the light of this fact.
That Hansen testified in court as to the disasters of man-made CO2 show the man, and any of his supporters to be deliberate liars or morons, take your pick.

Simon Evans:
I think most people calling for Hansen’s head would like to see him gone because he straddles a very thin line between merely being a concerned public servant and an ideologue using his public position in order to advocate political persecution against environmental heresy. The fact that he even involved himself in a trial thousands of miles away in support for a cause in which environmentalist “advocates” got clean away with an illegal act makes Hansen more than just a guy issuing public opinions about wrong doings. Especially since neither Hansen nor anyone else has even proven a crisis exists for which somebody has to be criminal liable anyway!
Should Hansen be fired? I think he should be muzzled since it is clear that he speaks out turn as it regards to who should be on trial for what. If he continues to issue unfounded accusations after receiving such a warning, then he needs to be shown the door.

Pragmatic (22:31:14) :
There is not much point giving a citation that no one has access to. The fact that the paper refers to the “de Vries solar cycle” is not a good start. Post a free link and you might get some response.

Geoff Sharp – thanks for reminding me about citation etiquette. Here’s the author’s personal copy:
http://www.wsl.ch/staff/jan.esper/publications/Raspopov_2008_PPP.pdf
Leif – please pardon the unnecessary tone in my last post.
While Raspopov has several suggestions for the phase shift Δt (years), the periodicity in his data suggests the 200 year cycle has played a role in climate.

Leif Svalgaard (20:59:49) :

“Pragmatic (19:07:00) :
can anyone rebut the finding of Raspopov, et al ?”
I’m not going to pay to read yet-another-conclusive-paper, find a link to it.
It is paleoclimatology, the Raspopov that I found:
http://www.wsl.ch/staff/jan.esper/publications/Raspopov_2008_PPP.pdf
I think all these people finding correlations in various time series should make the effort to go through a course on chaos and fractals.

Anna V. (08:51:34), last night when my husband was reading to me about Hamiltonian mechanics, we went off on a tangent and started talking about chaos and fractals and wondered if, since you mentioned chaos in a comment some weeks ago, you might recommend some texts for us to study? Please?

Chris H (09:50:37) :
@Leif
“What correlation? some people would take your graph to be strong support for AGW.”
Since you are so determined to see no rough correlation (even though I find it blindingly obvious), there is obviously nothing else I can say… I had hoped you’d have something more interesting to say 🙁
Ok, Chris, let’s say that your graph demonstrates excellent correlation between sunspots and temperature for most of its period. Here it is again:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/mean:132/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1850/mean:132/scale:0.010/offset:-0.8
It’s pretty good up to about 1940, yes? Then there is a decoupling until about 1970, with temperature lagging – no problem, we can explain that by aerosols or whatever you fancy. The ‘correlation’ picks up again and runs through to about 1985, then – woops. If temperature was to be related to sunspots only it should have fallen to about -0.2 by now, but instead it’s up at +0.4. What can explain that extraordinary decoupling of the ‘correlation’? Clearly not sunspots! Hmm, now let’s think what that might be…..
Do you not see the point of how powerful an argument this is for the influence of anthropogenic forcing? Not only do you strengthen the case that recent warming cannot be accounted for by natural forcings, you also have to presume a very high climate sensitivity in order to make any sense of your supposed correlation, and that hugely strengthens the case for future AGW being to the extreme end of projections!
So – nice job! 😉

This guy is a ~snip~. Solar activity doesn’t account for global warming today: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12234
He’s claiming we should feed the planet because it’s getting hotter. LOL! Does anyone really believe in that, with 6,7+ billion people on the planet?
Climate skeptics are ~snip~.

I agree. Global warming or not, we can’t justify any excuse to keep destroying our planet for the sake of “growth”. It’s just impossible, because there’s a limit somewhere.
Science was supposed to grow more crops more quickly with genetic engineering, and it did just that, but the human population grew just as quickly, and brought with it more pollution, more mouths to feed, and more land to develop!!
Earth’s already on its last leg as far as resources go, and we can’t keep growing and profiting without killing ourselves.
We need to not shoot ourselves in the foot and stop this before it’s too late. It probably already is, but we need to take hold of the brakes right now.

“WE MUST REDUCE POPULATION AND INDUSTRY IF WE WANT TO SURVIVE.”
A volunteer?

Sunspots are in fact colder than the rest of the solar surface. In any case, they have little to no relevance here.
We are stupidly killing our planet with major overpopulation and (over)industrialization. Time to wake up.
[snip- Verm that was a despicable comment, suggesting that a person should be “put down” for his views has earned you a permanent ban here, I don’t tolerate hate speech. -Anthony Watts]