CBS' Charles Osgood on the Sun – and a surprising suggestion

Is this the AGW crowd’s ‘Cronkite’ moment? As in, if we’ve lost Charles Osgood, we’ve lost middle america.

Funny he says “you heard it hear first” ? LOL.
Guess he doesn’t do much researching about this, as I have seen it posted on this site alone regularly for the last year, at least.
Love the site btw.

“Is the government doing anything about it? No”
Even HE recognizes that we just aren’t spending enough on the Sun! A million dollars weighs a metric ton. So 100 million dollars would weigh a hundred metric tons. Getting a space program to shoot additional fuel into the Sun would be no worse of a stimulus program than what has already been undertaken and it would put many people to work.
Will it work? Who knows? Can’t hurt. Why, I heard down at the cafe this morning that the government has been throwing money down rat holes. NASA could dig all that back up, clean it off, and send it to the Sun for some extra heat. And that means even MORE stimulus having to hire the diggers! It is a win, win proposition.

Well, the radio flux is creeping up. But hallelujah, the poobahs have finally noticed.
=========================================

Look at this madness
WASHINGTON – The flow of water in the world’s largest rivers has declined over the past half-century, with significant changes found in about a third of the big rivers. An analysis of 925 major rivers from 1948 to 2004 showed an overall decline in total discharge.
The reduction in inflow to the Pacific Ocean alone was about equal to shutting off the Mississippi River, according to the new study appearing in the May 15 edition of the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate.
The only area showing a significant increase in flow was the Arctic, where warming conditions are increasing the snow and ice melt, said researchers led by Aiguo Dai of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
“Freshwater resources will likely decline in the coming decades over many densely populated areas at mid- to low latitudes, largely due to climate changes, Dai said. “Rapid disappearing mountain glaciers in the Tibetan plateau and other places will make matters worse.”
Added co-author Kevin Trenberth, “As climate change inevitably continues in coming decades, we are likely to see greater impacts on many rivers and water resources that society has come to rely on.”
While Dai cited climate change as a major factor in the changes, the paper noted that other factors are also involved, including dams and the diversion of water for agriculture and industry.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090421/ap_on_go_ot/us_sci_shrinking_rivers

Roy Tucker (17:38:29) :

You mean there’s still a journalist out there somewhere?

Nah. Just another shill for Big Oil. Exxon-Mobil owns The Osgood Files, lock, stock and barrel. Besides, everyone knows he is really just a plant at CBS by Fox News and Karl Rove. /sarc off

Oh c’mon guys. Just look at that picture.
Then look at this one.
Isn’t it obvious what’s going on here?
BOW TIES!

For comparison:
“‘Quiet Sun’ baffling astronomers” (Tuesday, 21 April 2009)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8008473.stm
(^This very similar story came up in a recent WUWT thread.)

The flip side of all this rejoicing, though, is the opportunity in this for the alarmists to blame any cooling on the sun, and not on the fact that CO2 doesn’t raise global temperature to any great extent. I thought they were going to confuse the issue with a whole lot of palaver about albedo, but I can smell a strategy in this quiet sun. Why, oh why, must money, power, and politics interfere with science?
=======================================

The Watt Effect Lives!
from solarcycle24.com
Sunspot 1015
04/21/2009 by Kevin VE3EN at 23:15
The small new Cycle 24 sunspot has been numbered 1015 and is the first real sunspot in nearly 45 days. It poses no threat for solar flares.
Positively uncanny.
We’ll see how long it lasts. Of course the Watt Effect doesn’t guarantee longevity, only nearly immediate spots.

Leif, your coolness is a real study in how not to be a redhead.

A couple of years ago, a commenter on CA put up the history for Irtusk in Siberia.
It is a beautiful expostion of an 11 year temperature cycle,
http://climexp.knmi.nl/gettempall.cgi?someone@somewhere+30710+IRKUTSK+
Irktusk is interesting. Perhaps the furthest from the sea with a long history.

And the move to mainstream news continues….
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jDtgU7eRVxUAIAcRsShLOcgYfiywD97N6PJO0
Regarding this paragraph:
“President Barack Obama wants all of the permits auctioned off with billions of dollars in auction proceeds to blunt the cost hikes of electricity and other energy as fossil-fuel generated energy becomes more expensive.”
… when I read it I think I heard my wallet scream.

geophys55 (18:20:24) : Not a chance:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=7E60E3FA-802A-23AD-4291-E3975CBB96CB
D Overcast (17:21:04) : Given that this kind of news isn’t disseminated to the majority of people by the MSM that they place undue trust in, it is highly plausible that this is the first time many people are hearing. Not any readers here, obviously, though.

Leif Svalgaard (18:08:04) :
Dr. Hathaway, however grudgingly, is acting as a gentleman in this situation. Would that more in this debate would follow suit.

‘….is the government doing anything about it?’ Is this fellow a journalist? Does he mean what is the government doing about the sun? As a person sitting at the centre of the gaussian curve of human achievement, I am perplexed at this chaps choice of words. What is he saying? Please! Could someone raise me from my solitude?

I disagree with deadwood (17:50:26) about Charles Osgood being only in minor radio slots. Word spreads, even if he only does his one or two minutes on the radio each day. He is respected, and as others have said here, once the dam springs a leak, the whole scam about AGW may burst.
When the sun spots do return, I am anticipating is the following AGW tactic. Gore, late-September 2009 in front of cameras somewhere near the Arctic summer melt: “Since the Sun has been dormant for so long, the effects of excess CO2 in the atmosphere has been minimized during this brief respite, but when the solar activity resumes, global warming will increase even more dramatically than anticipated and sea level will rise even faster than we could have ever anticipated in our computer models. Manhattan Island and most of Florida will be under water in less than five years!!!.”
Then they will give Al the Nobel prize in Science.

Last fall I began informally checking Google News for the number of returns on searches for “global cooling” and “global warming”, in hard quotes. Changes in the occurance of these terms have been dramatic. There are also been large changes in whether an article is mentioning ‘cooling’ or ‘warming’ in a positive or negative sense.
I am aware that others – skeptic & believer – are making similar surveys, some much more formal & sophisticated than mine. Warming activists have made reports of these changing statistics on the green/AGW Gristmill blog. They know …
Posts here on WUWT have mentioned a changing ‘media consensus’ on the topic of climate change. They and others have noted that media in general have been happy to cheerlead for fellow liberals who happen to be promoting AGW … but that as indications emerge suggesting that the science of it has been hijacked by old-fashioned activism-politics, the media could prove unusually sensitive to having ‘been had’.
Media tend to like a liberal cause … but they don’t like feeling ‘played’, no matter how politically-correct the topic.
Making a huge symbolic issue out of the melting Arctic Icecap could be a turning point for AGW. If late this summer the ice is clearly hanging in there better than recent summers, the various spin-options will be weak. The public is comfortable applying common sense to questions about Arctic ice-coverage, and will happly smirk at the spin-slingin’.
The Osgood File is an early indicator of how the ‘the media war’ is going.

I skipped the comments as I am in a hurry, but I am certain I am joining many in thanking Mr. Osgood for a stimulating read. I also thank him for having the courage to speak his mind in the face of certain hysterical rebuttal.
Good on you sir!

Leif: How about “I hate to admit it when David Archibald is even right(er) but that seems to be the case here” or Landscheit maybe? LOL

Finally, a main stream commentator who has some knowledge of our climate history. One would think the MSM has never heard of the Maunder or Dalton Minimum. Yay, Charles Osgood!

Mike Bryant (18:24:57) :
“I’m pretty sure, and I know that Leif would agree with me, that if we could somehow transport all the CO2 in our atmosphere into the roiling core of the sun, we could solve two problems at once. The sun would almost certainly spring to its former glory, as life here on earth winks out!! Problem solved”.
Mike, you are a real party animal.

Robert Bateman (18:01:37) :
The cat is out of the bag.
Yes Robert, prepare for a flood of biased articles stating that the the Solar Minimum won’t stop Climate Change.

Leif should really do a guest post “Okay, here is what is really happening with the Sun and this is where is it likely to go.”
Leif is still batting 10 for 11 in my mind (it is really 10 for 10 but I’m still not convinced that there is bare minimum for all solar cycles including the Maunder Minimum so I’m scoring a stike-out for that one although it could still turn out to be just a sac-fly and the 10 for 10 would be preserved).

You folks are not giving Charles Osgood the respect he deserves. You might want to get up Sunday morning and watch “Sunday Morning” sometime.
“Charles Osgood, often referred to as CBS News’ poet-in-residence, has been anchor of CBS News Sunday Morning since 1994. He also anchors and writes “The Osgood File,” his daily news commentary broadcast on the CBS Radio Network.
Osgood’s commentaries draw one of the largest audiences of any network radio feature. He was called “one of the last great broadcast writers” by his Sunday Morning predecessor, Charles Kuralt.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1998/07/09/sunday/bios/main13584.shtml

Charlie, Charlie, Charlie – did you get this off the BBC?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8008473.stm
Or perhaps you both got it off one of the wire services and each of you fluffed it up with your own particular take on the story. I just finished reading the BBC story before coming over to WUWT; it so sounded like an instant replay.
How’s that line go again?
It’s the sun, stupid!

Cheers to Charles Osgood for disseminating this information. Applause.
Once homo sapiens wake up and realize how they have been duped by the current world religion…they will make the right decisions…..hopefully.
4.5 billion year old sun and earth as opposed to 450 year old modern human history.
Go figure.

Robert Bateman (18:01:37) :
The cat is out of the bag.
And it’s climbing the proverbial curtain…
(and if the curtain gets a swing to it, it will slide along the runners and reveal the wizard with his levers…)

Ted Clayton (19:27:12) :
…
Posts here on WUWT have mentioned a changing ‘media consensus’ on the topic of climate change. They and others have noted that media in general have been happy to cheerlead for fellow liberals who happen to be promoting AGW … but that as indications emerge suggesting that the science of it has been hijacked by old-fashioned activism-politics, the media could prove unusually sensitive to having ‘been had’.
Media tend to like a liberal cause … but they don’t like feeling ‘played’, no matter how politically-correct the topic.
…
The Osgood File is an early indicator of how the ‘the media war’ is going.
Ted: – two points.
[1] Everyone hates being treated like a patsy, especially if real deception has been performed. Hence good potential for a media backlash.
[2] Scandal stories also sell advertising space, the media can profit by swapping from “Scare” to “Scandal” – this could be a factor in especially trying economic times.
Ted: Good post.

“Graeme Rodaughan (20:57:08) :
They have also been saying that,
[1] The sun is more or less irrelevant.
[2] CO2 is the primary driver for climate (global warming) change.
If they turn around and start claiming that the Sun is now swamping CO2 as a climate driver. It weakens both points above.
Hoist on their own petard.”
Graeme, Graeme, Graeme!
You have so much to learn Grasshopper!
Your point 1 in the AGWA mantra is.
1) The Sun is more or less irrelevant wrt WARMING
Unfortunately, point 2 is this…
2) The Sun is overwhelmingly responsible for COOLING
3) Any warming trend is dictated by CO2
DaveE

The Osgood file is carried on KNX radio, the big CBS station for Southern California. The typical political commentary on this station is very liberal. The typical Osgood listener will be surprised by his comments, and may have been unfamiliar with the idea of the sun’s influence swamping the effect of CO2 on our climate.

Albedo. The Alfredo Sauce that makes the Sun very important in climate.
If the Sun is NOT active to generate enough Solar Wind, the GCR’s start htting home runs off the weakened pitcher, who is stuck on the mound without the proper stuff.
The bull pen is empty.
There is more to the Sun’s role than simple heating of Earth.
The Solar Wind override to GCR’s looms larger in it’s abscence.
Think of those variable Sunglasses.
Only invert them.
Now for the shrunken outer atmosphere.
Think of an R value. Like trapped air in winter clothing.
Makes for insulation.
Shrink that and more heat is emitted as opposed to the higher insulating factor of the normally expanded outer atmosphere.
All of this from a simple change in Solar Output, but not really Total Output.
It’s the Sun, stupid.
The biggest energy source in the ballpark cannot be irrelevant, any more than we should expect a body that is 333 times the mass of the Earth to be orbiting it.
Now, that really would be stupid.
Ok, we’ve been there, done that, but at the time, we had no clue as to the true scale of the comparison.
We should have a clue about the true importance of the biggest energy source in our backyard.

Steven Hill(17:50:36): “Look at this madness. WASHINGTON – The flow of water in the world’s largest rivers has declined over the past half-century, with significant changes found in about a third of the big rivers. An analysis of 925 major rivers from 1948 to 2004 showed an overall decline in total discharge.”
When we talk about global warming we always mentioned global CO2 levels and global temperature. I never see figures about global (decrease/increase) of the rainfall, the main source of river water. What did IPCC predict?

Are there monkeys flying out of certain places??

Paul Vaughan (18:21:00) :
For comparison:
“‘Quiet Sun’ baffling astronomers” (Tuesday, 21 April 2009)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8008473.stm
I noticed too that Osgood’s story was very similar to the BBC article. It does not matter as the main thing is to spread the knowledge about the Sun. But maybe he should have dropped the “Remember, you heard it here first…” part.

Leif Svalgaard (22:41:44)
“I happen to agree with my good friend Ken […]”
He’s an eloquent writer.
“The magnetic field thus has increased buoyancy with depth, which might make the field close to unsinkable, like trying to sink a giant raft to the bottom of the ocean.”
“If the field of the Sun does descend deep into the solar interior, it is behaving in a manner unlike the manner it displays in terrestrial plasma machines, where the plasma and field are immiscible.”
“[…] as a leaf falling under gravity falls bowed side down […]”
“It would be a valuable test of surface versus deep field dynamo models to undertake the Svalgaard–Wilcox (1976) study with modern data and ascertain the persistence of their correlation. This may shed further light on the important question of whether the source of the Sun’s dynamo is deep or shallow.”
“Acknowledgements
We appreciate Leif Svalgaard for fruitful discussions and supplying us with his supersynoptic charts, originally developed by Roger Ulrich. […]”
Speaking of Ulrich, is there anything further along the lines of investigation pursued in the following?
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0004-637X/560/1/466/53641.web.pdf?request-id=e0d05d7d-279b-40c2-b0ad-0da6d7c67987

A few more highlights from Schatten (2009) – Solar Physics:
“The name percolation is derived from the Latin term percolare, which means to strain or filter. Other scientists have often used it when other nonlinear phenomena occur (e.g., growth patterns in forest fires, crystal structures, etc.). […] For the Sun, we distinguish two forms or flavors of percolation […]”
“[…] using quantum statistics – which is inherently nonlinear,
since the variable jumps from integer to integer without smoothly going through the real number line […] used in forest fires, predator–prey (Lotka –Volterra) equations, and in a broad range of disciplines not amenable to the former techniques of differential equations.”
“[…] differential equations based upon physics, amenable to conditions where parameters are slowly changing […]”
“For chaotic conditions, where phenomena are changing so rapidly that differentials may not be possible […]”
“To avoid too much growth or decay, a “floor”
and a “ceiling” are also included. […] This is done for two practical reasons: i) Nonlinear physical phenomena always have some limit to their strength, and ii) observationally, a floor in the interplanetary field has been reported by Svalgaard and Cliver (2007). If a floor were not used, the duration of our broad activity minima periods would lengthen.”

Leif Svalgaard – I wish you knew how wrong you are.
[snip, play nice now ~ charles the moderator]

RW (00:58:50) :
Using Hadcrut temperatures, the average anomaly over the past three years has been 0.38. The average anomaly from 2000-2002, during the last peak in solar activity, was 0.38. Going back to previous solar minima, the three year average anomaly was 0.26 for 1995-7; 0.07 for 1985-7; and -0.11 for 1974-6.
If the solar cycle length/SSN has an indirect impact on temperature, (eg: Albedo from clouds, etc). Then, since we have just come out of 50 years of above average solar cycles we should expect to have seen a consistant long term increase in temperature during this period, and now as we enter a period of reduced solar activity we should expect a gradual cooling from the peak after about 2003. If solar activity stays low for 50 years we should end up back where we started.
So far, so good !

Solar activity is not currently driving global temperatures. CO2 concentrations are. This simple analysis shows you that quite clearly.

I think perhaps your simple analysis is a little bit too simple. If CO2 were driving climate as you suggest, then why hasn’t the temperature increased since the turn of the century? For sure it’s to do with the Oceans and the Sun, in tandem. That, perhaps, would be enough to confound any direct correlations you are looking for, I humbly suggest.
But more than this, consider the statement you have made above. Does that not seem counter-intuitive to you? It would take A LOT to convince me that it wasn’t at root the Sun, a whole lot. For some people however, it seems to take a lot to convince them it isn’t Co2, despite the fact that Co2 does not seem to be a causal actor in this play, whereas the Sun itself evidently is (being a giant ball of fire in an ice-cold room).

Richard Hill’s link to the Irkutsk data is certainly interesting. It should be noted though, that although the city is far from the sea it is close to Lake Baikal. This is no ordinary lake. It is large and extremely deep, containing about 20% of all the world’s fresh water – more than all the North American Great Lakes combined. This is bound to have some effect on the local climate.

It seems not to have been widely broadcast as yet that the Sun has been changed from incandescent to fluorescent, to help meet EU emission targets.

“Breaking scientific news”. When I hear this lead in I groan. All those Intro courses in science did for us was set us up for endless confusion and manipulation. Coffee is good, coffee is bad. CO2 is good, CO2 is bad ..always the hurricanes blowing, always the population growing, and the money owing… I want to live in America . Sorry, can’t get that West Side Story tune out of my head. Where was I? The sun, you say? Quite! Quite! Seems that might have something to do with it.

Ok – a little late to the debate but I was reading tetris (17:34:56) comment from Europe. He mention Claude Allegre – the new climate minister from France, anyhew did anyone else notice this remark from the NY Times last week. The article quotes French President Sarkosy, who dished the gossip on his fellow heads of state. Of interest was his quote that Obama was “badly briefed on climate change”.
Tempting to speculate that Dr. Allegre – a very well respected isotope geochemist and climate realist is the one briefing Mr. Sarkosy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/world/europe/17sarkozy.html

Anyone who has followed any popular science magazine, in print or on the web, over the last ten years has been witness to slow and then accelerating dissection of the body of science. It started with a silly hypothesis here and a study there, and soon large pieces were being removed willy nilly. These scientists, who are on an important mission, reached into the body of science and began removing the inner organs one by one. They remade them. Recently they took out the still beating heart and twisted it to their purpose. The final stitches have been placed, sealing the new organs within the rotting corpse. As the lifeless body is elevated to the highest position and the awful stinking offal of the true core of science lies on the laboratory floor, the lightning of political will cracks and booms around the now twitching monster as his makers scream in glee, “It’s alive! it’s ALIVE!!!!”
As the newly formed body of science is brought back to the floor of the laboratory, the world waits for the to hear the pronouncement that will issue from this construct of the New Science. As the microphones are placed close to record this wisdom, we hear, “Fire… hot… baddd!!”
Thank you New Scientists…
Can this patient be saved?

“Richard Briscoe (02:48:02) :
Richard Hill’s link to the Irkutsk data is certainly interesting. It should be noted though, that although the city is far from the sea it is close to Lake Baikal. This is no ordinary lake. It is large and extremely deep, containing about 20% of all the world’s fresh water – more than all the North American Great Lakes combined. This is bound to have some effect on the local climate.”
“From Wiki:
“Lake Baikal is in a rift valley, created by the Baikal Rift Zone, where the crust of the earth is pulling apart… In geological terms, the rift is young and active—it widens about two centimeters per year. The fault zone is also seismically active; there are hot springs in the area and notable earthquakes every few years.”

Jeremy;-)
Prof Mike Lockwood is an esteemed astrophysicist & has appeared on The Sky at Night with Sir Patrick Moore! However, as I posted a comment on a previous topic the other day, he used to be a firm believer that the Sun was the driver of global temps, not CO2. However, he has since converted to the new faith wholeheartedly for whatever reason. He wrote a paper with Carl Frolich in 05 showing TSI varied only by 0.2% during solar max to solar min, & that TSI had been declining over the last few years, this was demolished by Christopher Monckton at SPPI (well worth a visit sometime). I also noted that Lord Monckton pointed out that Svenmark researched a large chunk of the same data & came to the opposite conclusion to Lockwood!
I suspect, like many others have been, & others who read this site also suspect of those, that he has been got at. Probably through the old fashioned Yes Minister (old political satire prog in UK), of offering greater status, salary, general standing, possibly a top university position added in, greater research grants, cash is always a good inducer, but of course “we need the right man for the job, someone who is sympathetic to government policy on certain matters,” etc! If it happens here it happens elsewhere folks!
Generally, I am staggered that, considereing the global cooling measured by all four major temperature metrics for the last 7 years, (take note Prof Lockwood), the Sun is all quiet, with most predictions of its furious activity to come not happening, that someone is not asking the question, “just a minute chaps, the Sun’s all quiet, temperatures are going down, have we gone down the wrong path on this global warming stuff?”

OK, nvw, look at the third to last paragraph in your New York Times link at 04:34:47. I get the impression that Sarkozy was commenting that Obama doesn’t know much about the details of what the Europeans have done to control carbon. I don’t get the impression that Sarkozy was the least bit skeptical about its climate effect. But, more power to Allegre. We can but hope.
The Europeans and the Americans are being played for their guilt about past carbon use by the Russians, the Chinese, and the Indians. Those nations, and others, are perfectly aware that the globe is cooling, and that the role of CO2 has been exaggerated. But if they can get the developed West to hogtie themselves about carbon use, while not doing so themselves, it is all to the good for the developing nations. Watch this play out at Copenhagen and in the run-up to it. We can see the jostling already.
And by all means, read Peter Huber in the City Journal: ‘Bound to Burn’. He explains forcefully and persuasively why neither the developing nations nor the developed ones will wean themselves from hydrocarbon energy soon. Aren’t you glad that fossil fuel use doesn’t impact the climate very much after all?
=========================

Do you get it RW? Many here have shown that you’ve cherry-picked. Do you understand that that is an error and can mislead you? C’mon, be honest. It can’t hurt. Nor can it hurt you to be relieved of your carbon use guilt. For dessert, you can concern yourself with real environmental problems. God knows, we’ve got enough of them without wasting our essence on pursuing the chimera of carbon demonization.
==========================================

It would be the right time to propose something of the kind of the 1957 Geophysical Year, so as to convey all resources to study the sun-earth relation in times of a minimum.
Those studies would, for sure, clarify the GHG issue for good.

The Sun isn’t driving the planet’s temp right now.
Solar activity is too low. CO2 forcing requires substantial input, which is lacking due to higher albedo.
The GCR’s are driving the planet’s temp right now.
That is it’s problem.
Any brave Solar observers out there going to try and project this spot (1015)?

RW, please add a discussion of oceanic oscillation affects. These can have a significant impact on weather pattern variation over several decades. Certainly this has been the case in the past. What part do you think they are playing now, since no one has managed to turn them off yet to allow something else to affect weather pattern variations. The oceans are not warmer, or for that matter cooler, than would be expected for the various phases they are in regarding their oscillations. So far, the ocean temperatures are not being affected by CO2. They are behaving normally. And just so you know where to look, spend some time at NOAA on SST and try to find an ocean that is warm because of CO2, not because of its normal pattern of oscillation. Finally, it is well understood by meteorologists and climatologists that weather pattern variations are sourced by what ever the oceans are doing.

I keep bumping into these ridiculous articles, where Scientists give us some new information about the Climate but are in denial about any possible effects it might have on their belief system.
Some choice quotes:
In stark contrast to the loss of sea ice in the Arctic over the last 30 years, the frozen seas surrounding the South Pole have increased at the rate of 100,000 square kilometres a decade over the last 40 years.
That’s interesting…..
Scientists believe the growth is down to stronger surface winds over Antarctica and more frequent storms in the Southern Ocean – both direct consequences of the ozone hole.
Is it? Cool.
But the team from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Nasa warned the ozone hole was only delaying the impact of greenhouse gases on the climate of the White Continent.
If ozone levels recover as expected over the next 100 years, thanks to the international ban on damaging CFCs, weather patterns will return to normal and Antarctic sea ice will shrink rapidly, they said.
Wait a minute….. has the hole in the Ozone layer grown larger or not?. If it isn’t shrinking, then what good did banning CFC’s do and what benefit 100 years into the future will that give to Antarctica?
I must admit to feeling a little confused.

A Wod (2:54:35)
Some carbon dioxide alarmists try to dismiss the Little Ice Age-Solar connection by blaming the cooling on volcanic aerosols. Note figure 2, page 3, of Jasper Kirkby’s paper on Cosmic Rays and Climate, which shows the rough correlation between solar proxies and temperature proxies. For our complicated climate, this rough correlation is good enough for me.
http://aps.arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0804/0804.1938v1.pdf

eric 05:45:08
Well, the answer to your question is simple. Osgood’s listeners care what he thinks. And many of them are hearing for the first time that the sun is acting just a little unusually compared to its behaviour of the last half century. Now, my question is, why don’t you care? Maybe you oughta.
=============================================

kim (07:51:25) :
eric 05:45:08
Well, the answer to your question is simple. Osgood’s listeners care what he thinks. And many of them are hearing for the first time that the sun is acting just a little unusually compared to its behaviour of the last half century. Now, my question is, why don’t you care? Maybe you oughta.
The sun has always fluctuated. The sun’s irradiation increased over the first half of the 20th century and then became flat for the second half.
The indications are the next cycle looks to be weak. If the sun spots, stop it is believed that this is worth about 0.2C temperature reduction for the global average.
This is a small fraction of the 3C expected to result from a doubling of CO2 by human industry. It seems to me that the quiet sun is not a big deal.

Any of you, be the first to ascertain which is the missing link between Sun and earth climate….before the Climate Pontiff speaks out while projecting their new horrendous slides

Allan M R MacRae (04:48:31) Loved your post. The question is very politely posed. Yours is the ultimate question. Dr. Svalgaard is very well versed on the sun and it’s activity, but not WRT it’s impact on the earth. There is a huge gap in our knowledge right there. How does it interact? Are we considering all aspects? Do we know all aspects?

Don B (07:38:07) :
A Wod (2:54:35)
Some carbon dioxide alarmists try to dismiss the Little Ice Age-Solar connection by blaming the cooling on volcanic aerosols. Note figure 2, page 3, of Jasper Kirkby’s paper on Cosmic Rays and Climate, which shows the rough correlation between solar proxies and temperature proxies. For our complicated climate, this rough correlation is good enough for me.
http://aps.arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0804/0804.1938v1.pdf
Even Kirby doesn’t believe it is good enough. His conclusion is more work is needed to establish a mechanism:

Although recent observations support the presence of ioninduced
nucleation of new aerosols in the atmosphere, the possible contribution of such new particles to changes in the number of cloud condensation nuclei remains an open question. Furthermore, the parts of the globe and atmosphere that would be expected to be the most climatically sensitive to such processes are unknown, although they are likely to involve regions of low existing CCN concentrations.
Despite these uncertainties, the question of whether, and to what extent, the climate is influenced by solar and cosmic ray variability remains central to our understanding of the anthropogenic contribution to present climate change. Real progress on the cosmic ray-climate question will require a physical mechanism to be established, or else ruled out. With new experiments planned or underway, such as the CLOUD facility at CERN, there are good prospects that we will have some firm answers to this question
within the next few years.

There is an article in today’s printed version of The Times from the UK in the Weather Eye column on p.57 by Paul Simons. He says:
The Sun is having an unusually quiet spell. Normally it goes through 11-year cycle of activity that peeks with sunspots – dark freckles on its surface – followed by a calmer period with few sunspots.
PEAK!! Not PEEK!!
Geez, you’d think that the UK Times would have someone on staff who knows the difference between the two!
(and hopefully I’ve got my blockquote fixed, versus my previous comment… Anthony, do you think you can add a “preview/edit” option to your commenting scheme?)

[Reply: Unfortunately, the blog host, WordPress, doesn’t provide a preview function. ~dbstealey, mod.]

I don’t think astronomers are ‘baffled’ by the current inactivity.

eric 08:24:14
The means by which the sun drives the climate, or even if it does, are unknown. What is known is that temperatures are falling while CO2 is rising, disconfirming the strong link between CO2 and temperature. And your figure of 3 degrees Centigrade temperature rise per doubling of CO2 is the figure put out by the IPCC without a scientific basis except an assumed, and mistakenly so, large positive feedback by water vapor. You’ve come to believe, and accept on faith, something that has no scientific basis.
=============================================

eric:-)
A couple of points:- Firstly, you have got it a little bit the wrong way round, this blog does the leading, the rest of us do the cheering, clear? Good!
Secondly, yes the Sun does fluctuate & always has done & hopefully always will up to a point, I am pleased to here you know so, but we will see quite soon if this lack of Sunspots & low magnetic field, & generally quiet Sun has any significant effect, won’t we? It is also very dodgy ground to state things like “it is believed” without citing by whom & based upon what evidence, try something along the lines of “as I understand it….. or….it is understood that….” etc, that lends an air of authority rather than saying the former as you suggest it is a belief system not scientific fact. The IPCC has been shown to be wrong in many of its judgements many times over simply because it is activist lead, not scientist lead! What the IPCC has failed to do is a Risk Assessment on whether we are heading into a new Ice-Age or even a second Little-Ice-Age, instead of continual warming through to the next century, this also smacks of arrogance & ignorance with no interest in the science, just how the science can be manipulated for political ends!
AND finally, as a 51 year old engineer, as I frequently remind my 23 year old son, I may be getting old, but it doesn’t mean I am turning stupid with it! To equate age with the suggestion that one is finished, that attitude smacks of youthful arrogance, & not of a well thought through balanced argument! You have clearly taken a leaf out of that stupid old has been Albert Gore, & “shouldn’t listen to the old people!”.

To the Moderator, I apologise if the last post seemd a little bit of a rant, please feel free to snip as requried. AtB

[sorry – a valid email address is required to post here]

Leif, decisions are being based on the Co2 driver theory! Is this what we know? Is this correct? A trace gas has more to do with our atmosphere than the sun? You have stated that solar driver theory and Co2 driver theory have about the same correlation to the earth’s temperature. You are ignoring a great deal of evidence that shows a much greater correlation with solar activity (or inactivity as the case may be) than the C02 correlation. Solar activity is not the lone driver either, as we deal with change in obliquity, mean distances, etc. Correlation isn’t causation, but sometimes it is. I do not pretend to have the credentials that you have in regards to your field of study, but do not dismiss outright. A certain clerk in a patent office filed a very important paper, yet had no credentials in that field at the time.

Mike Bryant (09:50:45) :

“eric (08:24:14) :
The sun has always fluctuated. ”
CO2 and earth average temperature, on the other hand..
In the past 400,000 years CO2 has fluctuated between about 180 and 280 ppM, driven by temperatures. It is now at an unprecented level over 380ppM, driven by human industrial activity.

Mike Bryant (09:27:16) I have considered unsubscribing as well, but enjoy sending them my comments and using their links to my congress rep, Salazar. Then I let them know what I sent to Salazar. I can at least hope it is annoying to use Repower’s services against their aims.

kim (09:10:08) :
eric 08:24:14
The means by which the sun drives the climate, or even if it does, are unknown. What is known is that temperatures are falling while CO2 is rising, disconfirming the strong link between CO2 and temperature. And your figure of 3 degrees Centigrade temperature rise per doubling of CO2 is the figure put out by the IPCC without a scientific basis except an assumed, and mistakenly so, large positive feedback by water vapor. You’ve come to believe, and accept on faith, something that has no scientific basis.
It is incorrect to say that a strong link is disconfirmed.
The expected rate of global temperature change is expected to by about 0.2 K/decade. The internal variation and other factors can be expected to overwhelm this rate of change for short periods of time as much as a decade or morel. The change in temperature we have experienced are to be expected even while the radiational forcing due to the CO2 increase is still operating.

Joint Press Release Issued by Al Gore & Dr. James Hansen:
We wish the best for Charles Osgood and his loved ones as they deal with his sudden onset of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Gaia bless you, Charles.
Al & Jim

1015: Blank, gone, vanished…
The sun rests on…

Steve… maybe I’ll sign back up…

eric;-)
Point taken. I respectfully withdraw my remarks regarding youthfull arrogance in your case. Age notwithstanding however, I maintain that the tone of the comments you made should in the circumstances have reflected your seniority, IMHO! All other comments stand!
Pray tell, when do senior citizens exceed their “sell by date” to legitimately comment on current affairs, & dare I suggest, offer an opinion on them? For me it would be when they no longer refuse having the lid screwed down! Fight to the bitter end I say.
I recommend this site, Climate Realist, ICECAP, etc. for further study on a regular basis.
AtB

Comment on Climate Heretic (08:25:57)
Sober science auditors have political roots of more than one stripe. There may be some untenable assumptions built into your equations.
– – – –
Leif Svalgaard (01:38:20)
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~obs/torsional.html

I see that the graph has been extended by a number of years – but what about papers that take the line of analysis further? (If they exist, they are not easy to locate – so far…) I was pleased to see some of the methods pursued in Ulrich (2001), but there was a lot of refinement left to do – & several years have passed — was the 2001 paper really the end of that fruitful line of analysis? Perhaps a publication is forthcoming? – perhaps when the timing might be better for new ideas to be accepted? Now I am beginning to suspect politics….

“Could another minimum activity period on the Sun counteract, in any way, the effects of global warming?”
To my mind this statement suggests that AGW is a real problem and the sun can save us. As yet, no one has proved AGW to my satisfaction.

eric 10:30:24
Ah, hopeful words. Why is it that none, or almost none, of the climate models predict natural variability to overwhelm the effect of CO2 for ‘as much as a decade or more’? And please see lucia’s Blackboard at rankexploits.com/musings/ for disconfirmation, at the 95% confidence level, of the AR4 projection of 0.2C rise per decade, in eight short years.
The models are wrong; they’ve overestimated the sensitivity of climate to CO2. This is the simplest explanation for today’s dropping temperatures while CO2 continues to rise. You may hope that temperature starts to rise again, but the oceanic oscillations in their cooling phase and possibly the effect of the quiescent sun makes your hopes vain. We shouldn’t base expensive and dangerous policy on your vain hopes.
=============================================

Paul Vaughan (11:11:46) :
Comment on Climate Heretic (08:25:57)
Sober science auditors have political roots of more than one stripe. There may be some untenable assumptions built into your equations.
– – – –
If this was a science debate I would agree but this is not, it is political, look at the Polls where they break it out on party lines, of course there are cross-over individuals but the political nature of opinion on this issue is clear and driven from the top down on both sides.
I myself believe in Social Liberty but am a Fiscal Conservative, what I do not support is intolerance from any side. I firmly respect people for their opinions even though I do not understand their lack of conviction. I am firmly entrenched in this battle and have been for a decade.
The truth will be the science left after the political battle which has no politics.

eric 10:20:00
It is a lie to say that the temperatures of the last 400,000 years have been driven by CO2. The ice cores show a correlation between temperatures and CO2 over that time period, but the temperature rises approximately 800 years before the CO2 rises, suggesting that the temperature rise causes the CO2 rise rather than the other way around. Recruitment of CO2 from ocean outgassing or other CO2 stores is even a plausible mechanism for the lag.
380 ppm is also not an unprecedented level of CO2. Where did you get that idea?
You hurt your credibility when you lie like that. Lots of the people reading this blog are not as naive as you seem to think they are.
Furthermore, over the last hundreds of millions of years there is no correlation between temperature and CO2 level, so far as we can tell.
========================================

E.M.Smith (10:44:20) :
You know, the comments about the French et. al. got me thinking:
Perhaps now that the U.S.A. is firmly on the AGW bandwagon, and given the Rest Of World tendency to want to bash us, it will now become fashionable to be anti-AGW so that the America Bashing can continue?
No, really! I can hear it now “Those Americans are SO last Millennium; they still worry about AGW. They don’t have a clue about the solar minimum…”
Well, I can hope can’t I? 8-}
You have been taken in by an April fools joke. The person who posted the news about Claude Allegre being considered for environment minister by Sarkozy was joking.
http://www.scienceblogs.de/primaklima/2009/04/ein-aprilscherz-wird-zum-welterfolg.php
The blogger who did this says when he read Marc Morano and Benny Peiser’s
comments about his story, he laughed until tears came to his eyes.
You will have to translate this story.

To the moderator: How do I write embedded hyperlinks such as Smokey (08:27:06) : where he has ” directly under the graph” and the graph is hyperlinked.
I can write these in MS Word, but when I cut and paste from the program into this text block, the link disappears.
Preferably my ignorance will not be made public and you can email me a response.
thanks in advance.

eric 12:16:35
Now, that’s funny. Still, once Sarkozy snaps to the fact that the Europeans and the Americans are being played for their carbon use guilt at Copenhagen, he may wish he’d taken advice from Allegre. And that playing is becoming more obvious every day, just as the failure of the CO2=AGW paradigm is becoming more obvious every day. Tipping point soon, my friend.
=================================

Pardon my guffawing… Adolfo caused me to regurg coffee.
eric (05:45:08) :
“Who cares what Charles Osgood thinks? He has no expertise in climatology. He is a human interest, soft news reporter. He is well past his sell by date.
This blog is nothing but cheer leading.”
And a cheer-ful bunch they are Eric. But please note that it is often the tone of the AGWs that older folks know nothing or are stale. This is reflected in posts all over the net from barking AGWs who show an open disdain for senior skeptic scientists.
The MSM may be setting Mr. Osgood out front to test their transition strategy. The avuncular Osgood sets the table for the transition away from the failed AGW campaign to something new. What they hate to admit is that repositioning their content WILL improve their ratings. The key for all networks and MSM is get with the new program… anything but AGW. And “Look, we made a mistake” type editorials – garner big numbers and forgiving readers. Remember Checkers?

Frank Perdicaro (13:54:53) : No guesses..perhaps he followed WUWT recipe (Rx: Castor Oil) and has been relieved of all the burden he had.

Leif Svalgaard (13:25:03)
“Those winds are very much an active area of research, and lots of papers and no politics.”
– –
As (indirectly) suggested previously, I hope you will ask your contacts to publish sensible summaries of the data to a webpage — separate pages for:
i) monthly average rotation rate by N&S latitude
ii) daily (estimated) rotation rate by N&S latitude
Once the data is publicly available, my suspicion that someone is “sitting on” (perhaps ‘politically incorrect’ for-the-times) leads from Ulrich’s very fruitful 2001 investigation may fade.
If I had access to sensible summaries of the data I would do something similar to what Ulrich did – but I would go a lot further, I would be more organized, and I would not view everything through a differential rotation (so-called) “law” lens.
This is a fascinating area of research. There seems to be the potential for a major discovery – & in the fairly near future. I can see why people are hoarding the data and not extending credit to some of the smart players at Oulu.
We should be throwing an army of investigators at this.
I’ve no doubt I could turn up more insight that what I can find published.
…but perhaps it’s politically convenient if the truth is delayed?…
As long as the data is not posted on a webpage, some people might wonder ‘why? – what is so easy-to-see that it has to be hidden?’

Wish I knew how to attach the graphs, but I am new at this.
RW.
I am not sure I see what you mean for correlation of CO2 and temp. If go to woodfortrees and plot woodfortrees temp index as series 1 and C02 index (from 1979 and normalized to 1) as series 2, I see a flat temp period from about 1980 to 1995 for temp. CO2 is steadily increasing. From 1993 to about 2002 both rise . From about 2000 to 2009 temps are flat, CO2 continues to increase. I was a bit surprised that I see the same thing when I plot the GISS from 1979. If I go back further with the GISS (to 1960) it is even more obvious that temp is flat while CO2 is roughly linear. On a smaller time frame even GISS and CO2 from 2000 show CO2 increasing and temp flat. I had expected to find better agreement to a steady rise with the GISS. While both flat periods are probably too short to be climate, they are long enough to make me skeptical about a direct correlation of temperature to CO2.

My apologies if this has already been said, and perhaps better than this, but there are so many posted replies that I don’t have time right now to read them all.
That said, my suspicion is that rather than a display of true journalism, what is really happening here is a face-saving / bet-hedging move on the part of the alarmists who have been predicting thermal disaster. I’ve read over the last year or so statements to the effect that global warming has taken a hiatus, but don’t you worry, its gonna come roaring back! Well, this piece feeds this story. They’ll say look, the solar output is as low as it has been in a zillion eons, yet we’ve not become engulfed in ice like we should have. See, its the greenhouse effect that is hampering the natural action of the Sun, and as soon as solar output comes back to normal we’re all gonna die!
Just wait — this will be the party line.

Climate is changing and always will. The climate celebrities, however, are linking climate and the economy. Yes, there has been warming to end the Pleistocene. Climate is a multiple input, multiple loop, multiple output, complex system. The facts and the hypotheses, however, do not support CO2 as a serious ‘pollutant’. In fact, it is plant fertilizer and seriously important to all life on the planet. It is the red herring used to unwind our economy. That issue makes the science relevant.
Sulphate from volcanoes can have a catastrophic effect, but water vapour is far more important. Water vapour (0.4% overall by volume in air, but 1 – 4 % near the surface) is the most effective green house blanket followed by methane (0.0001745%). The third ranking gas is CO2 (0.0383%), and it does not correlate well with global warming or cooling either; in fact, CO2 in the atmosphere trails warming which is clear natural evidence for its well-studied inverse solubility in water: CO2 dissolves rapidly in cold water and bubbles rapidly out of warm water. The equilibrium in seawater is very high; making seawater a great ‘sink’; CO2 is 34 times more soluble in water than air is soluble in water.
CO2 has been rising and Earth and her oceans have been warming. However, the correlation trails. Correlation, moreover, is not causation. The causation is under experimental review, however, and while the radiation from the sun varies only in the fourth decimal place, the magnetism is awesome.
“Using a box of air in a Copenhagen lab, physicists traced the growth of clusters of molecules of the kind that build cloud condensation nuclei. These are specks of sulphuric acid on which cloud droplets form. High-energy particles driven through the laboratory ceiling by exploded stars far away in the Galaxy – the cosmic rays – liberate electrons in the air, which help the molecular clusters to form much faster than climate scientists have modeled in the atmosphere. That may explain the link between cosmic rays, cloudiness and climate change.”
As I understand it, the hypothesis of the Danish National Space Center goes as follows:
Quiet sun → reduced magnetic and thermal flux = reduced solar wind → geomagnetic shield drops → galactic cosmic ray flux → more low-level clouds and more snow → more albedo effect (more heat reflected) → colder climate
Active sun → enhanced magnetic and thermal flux = solar wind → geomagnetic shield response → less low-level clouds → less albedo (less heat reflected) → warmer climate
That is how the bulk of climate change might work, coupled with (modulated by) sunspot peak frequency there are cycles of global warming and cooling like waves in the ocean. When the waves are closely spaced, the planets warm; when the waves are spaced farther apart, the planets cool.
The ultimate cause of the solar magnetic cycle may be cyclicity in the Sun-Jupiter centre of gravity. We await more on that.
Although the post 60s warming period appears to be over, it has allowed the principal green house gas, water vapour, to kick in with more humidity, clouds, rain and snow depending on where you live to provide the negative feedback that scientists use to explain the existence of complex life on Earth for 550 million years. Ancient sedimentary rocks and paleontological evidence indicate the planet has had abundant liquid water over the entire span. The planet heats and cools naturally and our gasses are the thermostat.
Check the web site of the Danish National Space Center.
http://www.space.dtu.dk/English/Research/Research_divisions/Sun_Climate/Experiments_SC/SKY.aspx
Keeping in mind that windmills are hazardous to birds, be wary of the unintended consequences of believing and contributing to the all-knowing environmental lobby groups.

Francis T. Manns (20:28:43)
THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE and BEST post on this site in explanation to the complex fluid of the universe in which we live [against the current rigid orthodoxy of the AGW religion].
Period.
I copied that post Francis, for future reference and study. THANKS!
BRAVO….again.
Two fantastic posts BACK TO BACK (Smokey and Francis). Not too bad eh?
Thanks to WUWT team for making posts like these possible. There are truly some great minds on this site.
DAMN REFRESHING!

Julie L (09:00:24) : …that peeks with sunspots
So what’s wrong with that? How do you know it is not peeking with sunspots? What else would it peek with? Big blue eyes – I think not!
Anyway, this is no less strange of usage than the reporter who claimed the Catlin Team in the first few weeks of their trek was experiencing “torrid” conditions. In the “peeks” case, they only missed by one letter!

We have to wake up the Sun now, before it’s too late. There’s tipping points, once the ice crosses the 60th paralled we’re all doomed. We must launch nuclear rockets into the Sun before it’s too late. Arrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Smokey. Do you expect me to reproduce the chart with ASCII art? I’ve pointed you in the direction of the data so you can reproduce the scatter plot yourself and see strong correlations, but you seem reluctant to do so.
It’s well known that on the internet you can find 20 separate people who back any proposition whatsoever. The problem is that not one of your graphs shows what you want them to. 1, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11 and 13 show periods of a decade or less, and like I’ve said, you cannot measure climate over a decade. A bit like how you can’t tell if an oak tree is growing by measuring it for a day. 2 doesn’t work. 3 and 7 are regional temperatures, not global. 8 highlights two points out of 360 – otherwise known as cherry picking. 12 and 14 show speculation with no physical basis. 15 shows a physically meaningless high order polynomial fit. 17 – what are you trying to show here? 18 comes close to providing some support for your views, but neglects to mention La Niña, and does not show error bars. 18, 19, 20 – er, yeah…
If you really want to look at short periods, what’s wrong with the last 14 months? Clear upward trend of 15 degrees/century!!!
Mark_0454: try downloading the data from woodfortrees, then plot CO2 concentration vs. global temperature in your favourite spreadsheet program. Do this for the whole period for which data is available, as I did, and you’ll see a strong correlation. Talking about short periods is pointless – internal variability, not external forcing, dominates year-to-year variations.
Ric Werme – here is a graph showing temperatures and PDO index. PDO index varies about zero – it’s an oscillation after all. Temperature oscillates about a secular upward trend. I downloaded the raw data, plotted a scatter chart and found no correlation between temperatures and PDO index from 1900-present.
Don’t know what you mean by 30 year look at correlation. I did CO2 from 1958 – present, because that’s the period of direct measurement.
“Akasofu’s hypothesis that PDO and linear warming from the Little Ice Age explains the temperature history for the last century ot two.”
You can’t explain warming with warming. What caused the linear warming?

Ric Werme (15:42:01) :
RW (06:52:38) :
Ric Werme: you link to a piece in which the data is heavily smoothed, which inflates apparent correlations. It also uses US temperatures instead of global.
Joe D’Aleo may have used USHCN because of our downwind proximity of the PDO. Joe does have some shorter period raw MSU temps vs ENSO data at http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Correlation_Last_Decade.pdf
While that R^2 is a pretty paltry 0.36, the CO2 data has a R^2 of 0.00 to 0.08. However, it is monthly data, so it may not be a fair comparison since the CO2 signal has that annual oscillation. Perhaps the only thing worse than smoothed data is raw data, especially over a shorter term than the century of data I previously pointed out. What do you consider “Goldilocks” data?
BTW, your 30 year look at correlation covers the warm period of the current PDO cycle. If global warming is heavily influenced by the PDO, then you’ve picked the ideal period to show a correlation with rising CO2. Looking at a shorter term should show a poor correlation with CO2 (like Joe’s 0.00) due to the recent cooling, looking at a longer term (like a full PDO cycle) will help suppress the PDO’s effect and give a better result. Of course, then you have to worry about Akasofu’s hypothesis that PDO and linear warming from the Little Ice Age explains the temperature history for the last century ot two.
The very definition of the PDO almost precludes it from being correlated to a long lasting global warming signal, and limits it to explaining short term variability:
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest
Updated standardized values for the PDO index, derived as the
leading PC of monthly SST anomalies in the North Pacific Ocean,
poleward of 20N. The monthly mean global average SST anomalies
are removed to separate this pattern of variability from any
“global warming” signal that may be present in the data.

Interesting info and comments on the ACRIM website:
http://acrim.com/
“The requirements for a long-term, climate TSI database can be inferred from a recent National Research Council study which concluded that gradual variations in solar luminosity of as little as 0.25 % was the likely forcing for the ‘little ice age’ that persisted in varying degree from the late 14th to the mid 19th centuries. A centuries-long TSI database will have to be calibrated by either precision or accuracy to a small fraction of this value to be of any use in assessing the magnitude of solar forcing.”
Apparently there is a metrology problem with the satellite data (similar to the surface temperature system?). And some disagreement on the “settled science”. And they want “centuries” of DIRECT measurements for an accurate assessment. I guess there are still some real scientists around.
The charts look like TSI MIGHT be bottoming out, but not enough to say for sure.

[snip – get a hold of yourself]

“[snip – get a hold of yourself]”
???
“Today, RW does a 180° flip, and says…”
Yes, smokey, I was being ironic. You obviously don’t understand the criteria for determining whether a trend is significant or not. But if you’re so wedded to claiming ‘trends’ based on periods that are far too short, then you’ll just have to accept that since 2008, temperatures are strongly rising.

Sure, it’s a short trend so far, RW, but with the AMO and the PDO newly in their cooling phase, and with past temperatures demonstratively determined by those and other oceanic oscillations, we can predict at least 20 years of cooling. Even the most diehard alarmists tend to concede that another ten years of cooling will constitute a trend, and call seriously into question the paradigm of CO2=AGW. So kick back with a julep, put your feet up, and contemplate the thermometer. You are unconvincing, so far.
====================================