Claim: Solar activity not a key cause of climate change, study shows

Dear Anthony,
My research is linked below. My research is quite contrary to the article.
http://sunspotshurricanesandglaciers.com/files/74034647.pdf
Most Sincerely,
Paul Pierett

I love the logic here. (Not)
First they assume a cause. (Volcano’s)
Then, they define “climate change” in such a way that it only includes changes which can be attributed to the cause that they have already chosen.
Then they write up a study, and claim that this study “Proves” that they have invalidated all other sources of “climate change”, in favor of their pre-selected “cause”.
brilliant, I suppose, but only for those who are impressed by academic gamesmanship.
You note that his previous work was on cosmology. I humbly suggest that Dr Andrew Schurer’s time would be put to far more productive us in the future if he focused on cosmetology; at least he might have a chance of turning out something productive.

I’m Rob M too and I was just about to say that.
They are “fitting” sun activity to models rather than finding correlation between sun activity and realty.

Everyone should try and read Paul Pierett’s paper above.

Some of the problems with this paper:
1. They use a conventional climate model which does not consider any of the many solar amplification mechanisms described in the literature.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/search?q=solar+amplification+mechanism
2. They switch datasets used for solar forcing from Steinhilber et al to Wang et al in the year 1800. If they had maintained consistency and used Steinhilber all the way through the year 2000, there would have been greater solar forcing at the end of the 20th century.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/04/new-paper-predicts-sharp-decline-in.html
3. They don’t consider accumulated solar energy/time integral of solar activity, which can explain 95% of climate change over the past 400 years.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-sun-explains-95-of-climate-change.html
RicHard. says: December 23, 2013 at 9:58 am
I was about to have a look at this paper below, guess no need to now.
Paper finds solar activity explains climate change over past 200,000 years
Suggest you still have a look – the paper makes a strong case that glacial-interglacial cycles are primarily due to changes in solar activity, not Milankovitch Cycles, which suffer from the so-called 100,000 year problem.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/12/paper-finds-solar-activity-explains.html

“His papers up to 2011 were all about cosmology, then all of the sudden he starts publishing on climatology issues. One wonders if his previous funding dried up to make such a dramatic shift in study. Note the “…was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council.” at the end. That alone makes me suspicious of the science presented because it looks a lot like “science for hire” ”
He is a postdoc (which is what Research Associate usually means at that stage of his work); the work before (08) must be grad work, but I couldn’t figure out who his mentor was just from the author lists. It is common and often recommended to slightly switch focus and institution between you grad work and your post doc work.
All postdocs are scientists for hire. Or you don’t eat.
And BTW re cosmology, the sun is a star.

I guess, based on this study, we have nothing to fear when our sun goes super-nova.

Hockey Schlick,
I was only joking.

Necessary assumptions:
1. The overall energy from the Sun is a constant.
2. Variations in Solar Magnetic Fields do not affect the Earth’s climate in any significant way.
3. Solar storms and other solar physical phenomena do not affect the Earth’s climate in any significant way.
4. Pre-industrial global temperature had a constant maximum.
5. After a volcanic eruption-caused temperature drop, global temperature would, over time, return to that constant.
How could this account for Hot House and Ice Age periods in the paleoclimate?

What is wrong with these people ? Have they lost all common sense ?
Ok then, shut the Sun down and observe how the climate changes…
Idiots !

[snip problem has been corrected see upthread -mod]

“funded by an NGO research council with a political mission to grab a headline.”
Which is just Anthony’s opinion which is not backed up by any facts…
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/work/policy/openness.asp
[ See this: “NERC’s Science Impacts Database Link to external site includes more than 200 examples of where NERC science has made, or has the potential to make, a political, economic, social or practical impact.” -mod]

I had to write a thesis on Einstein for my MSc and on Newton for my BSc. Of the two, eistein was the most humble but still suffered from bouts of irrationality. Newton was at times a nasty political animal but a brilliant engineer and scientist. Of the two, my vote goes to Eistein.
Isn’t this uni one of Bouldon’s / Boulton’s of CRU/UEA fame.?

Martin says:
December 23, 2013 at 11:17 am
Your fully baggaged mind did not allow you to see the nuance in AW’s writing.

This article is not worthy , but then again we must keep Leif happy.
Anthony will not and can’t oppose Leif, even though he does not see things the same way.
This site is not balanced and censors so much. Shame on Anthony, who has a good handle on the climate but yields and gives so much longitude to the likes the likes of Leif and others. UGH.
I know you will not post it,(who cares) but I know you got it.
On to the Layman sunspot site, much more balanced.

Paul homewood.
Surely the paper with Mann as an author that you reference is not the same as the one being reviewed here or has it been amended since it was originally written?
Tonyb

Paul Pierett I am in total agreement. I saw this years ACE and SSN graphs and saw exactly the same thing you did a few weeks ago, with tornado and hurricane activity tracking well with them.
This is a central point I will be making in the opening minutes of my first weather-climate video out early January, that also will feature an extreme weather events analysis and a WeatherAction 2013 last quarter forecast review. Thanx to you and a growing army of others, this important over-looked point will be revealed.

“… variations in heat from the sun…” vs “… fluctuations in solar activity.”
The two are not the same, with the former being a subset of the latter.
Solar activity involves not merely how much heat is being produced by the Sun, but also magnetic field changes, solar wind changes in density and speed, spectral shifts of the solar output, cosmic ray flux changes,

“Research examining the causes of climate change in the northern hemisphere over the past 1000 years has shown that until the year 1800, the key driver of periodic changes in climate was volcanic eruptions. These tend to prevent sunlight reaching the Earth, causing cool, drier weather. Since 1900, greenhouse gases have been the primary cause of climate change.”
So what caused the Climate’s Damascene conversion (after 4½ Billion years) in 1800? The effects of volcanos swamped by CO2 from Napoleon’s armies in their SUVs, perhaps?
Do these dishonest clowns with their dodgy models really expect to be taken seriously?

“Research examining the causes of climate change in the northern hemisphere over the past 1000 years has shown that until the year 1800, the key driver of periodic changes in climate was volcanic eruptions.”
Are these the same volcanoes that don’t put out significant amounts of CO2, that all-powerful ‘special’ gas with pixie dust qualities? It is interesting to see volcanoes invoked as a way of trying to minimize the influence of the solar variation on temperatures, while later the same volcanoes are ignored as influences when it is important that CO2 look as if it is so influential. This is hardly the first look at the idea. I predict that as the temperatures continue to decline for the next 15 years, one or another volcano will be blamed for it, even as the sun paints itself featureless for a decade.
My first take on reading the abstract is how stupid the idea is. Volcanoes? But no influence on CO2 from eruptions, but CO2 is the cause of temperatures rising since 1900, when there was almost no CO2 of human origin. The rise in temps in the 20’s and 30’s was now cause by AG CO2 – is that the message? And the cooling that started in the 40’s was not caused by the beginning of the rise of AG CO2? They should get their story straight. The biggest volcanoes in the past 40 years were in the period when the temperature rose. That rise was AG CO2, was it? And the current temperature pause while 1/3 of all AG CO2 emitted to date is cause by what exactly? More no-CO2 volcanoes?
At least in the coming years there will be plenty of useless old scientific papers to burn to keep warm. We can read them, laugh and toss them into the fire.
PS Mosher – you would meet a lot less embarrassment if you simply kept quiet. We are not buying the idea of your intellectual omnipotence. Stop defending the indefensible. It is scaring the cat and it’s bad for science.

Looks like another one of Leif’s often stated “pet theories” This one no doubt funded by the author’s newly discovered “gravy train”. More bullshite to baffle brains.

Since we are onto models here is a much earlier one. I guess it’s not as good as the latest, spanking new models like the ones used by the IPCC to project temperature.

Abstract – 2000
Although the processes of climate change are not completely understood, an important causal candidate is variation in total solar output. Reported cycles in various climate-proxy data show a tendency to emulate a fundamental harmonic sequence of a basic solar-cycle length (11 years) multiplied by 2N (where N equals a positive or negative integer). A simple additive model for total solar-output variations was developed by superimposing a progression of fundamental harmonic cycles with slightly increasing amplitudes. The timeline of the model was calibrated to the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary at 9,000 years before present. The calibrated model was compared with geophysical, archaeological, and historical evidence of warm or cold climates during the Holocene. The evidence of periods of several centuries of cooler climates worldwide called “little ice ages,” similar to the period anno Domini (A.D.) 1280–1860 and reoccurring approximately every 1,300 years, corresponds well with fluctuations in modeled solar output. A more detailed examination of the climate sensitive history of the last 1,000 years further supports the model. Extrapolation of the model into the future suggests a gradual cooling during the next few centuries with intermittent minor warmups and a return to near little-ice-age conditions within the next 500 years. This cool period then may be followed approximately 1,500 years from now by a return to altithermal conditions similar to the previous Holocene Maximum.
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/23/12433.full

Of course the NERC-Natural Environment Research Council has a political agenda. It, like the US National Science Foundation, are the two named partners who created the Belmont Forum in 2009 and who now manage the Belmont Challenge to “ensure equitable economic and social development.” Here’s the post describing the Belmont Challenge http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/the-belmont-challenge-and-the-death-of-the-individual-via-education/ from June 2012.
Climate change is merely the excuse for what the OECD is now openly calling the Great Transition. Belmont Challenge fits right in with both the OECD and the UN’s transformational plans for all of us. The only way out is widespread knowledge of these intentions before they become a fait accompli.

This study is misleading.
As extensively demonstrated in my papers since 2007 (JGR), the strength of the solar signature on paleoclimatic climatic records strongly depends on the particular paleoclimatic climatic record that is used.
If hockey-stick like temperature reconstructions are used, then the solar signature is very small. However, if other non- hockey-stick temperature reconstructions showing for example a significant MWP and LIA are used, then the solar signature is quite strong.
The result of the paper derive from their usage of a kind of average paleoclimatic temperature reconstructions that however excludes several modern reconstructions showing a large pre-industrial variability. Thus, they compare against an average temperature reconstruction that is biased toward the hockey-stick like temperature reconstructions that imply a low solar effect on climate. Consequently they discovered some “hot water” already known since 2000: that is, if the past did not change much the sun does little to climate changes.
To know more about this issue and about the difference between the two kind of temperature reconstructions (hockey-stick and non-hockey-stick) read two of my recent papers:
Scafetta N., 2013. Discussion on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming. Pattern Recognition in Physics, 1, 37–57. (open access)
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/1/37/2013/prp-1-37-2013.html
Scafetta, N. 2013. Discussion on climate oscillations: CMIP5 general circulation models versus a semi-empirical harmonic model based on astronomical cycles. Earth-Science Reviews 126, 321-357.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825213001402
***************
For those interested in something more interesting, I have just updated the temperature of Nov/2013 in my graph showing the temperature against the forecast of my astronomical harmonic model first published in Oct/2011. The forecast worked quite well during these last two year where my model correctly predicted a slight warming.
See the figure below:
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model_1

Lame.

RicHard. says:
December 23, 2013 at 9:58 am
I was about to have a look at this paper below….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
For the curious here is the link Paper finds solar activity explains climate change over past 200,000 years… to the essay at the Hockey Schtick. The paper is from 2002.

is there a rush on studies being published for Christmas!
22 Dec: Nature Geoscience: Extensive liquid meltwater storage in firn within the Greenland ice shee
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2043.html
22 Dec: BBC: Matt McGrath: ‘Massive’ reservoir of melt water found under Greenland ice
The melting of the Greenland ice sheet has been a significant contributor to a rise in sea levels over the past 100 years.
According to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the ice sheet lost 34 billion tonnes of ice per year between 1992 and 2001 – but this increased to 215 billion tonnes between 2002 and 2011…
But crucially the scientists don’t know the ultimate destination of the water in the reservoir…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25463647
22 Dec: AFP: Vast water store beneath Greenland’s ice
The secret store appears to have been around for some time and was not initiated by man-made global warming, the scientists believe…
The next step is to determine whether the reservoir helps or hinders the survival of Greenland’s icesheet.
“It might conserve the meltwater flow and thus help slow down the effects of climate change,” said Forster…
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h2zLeeXZz438B40Bx1GoxqhjJXgA?docId=a388886e-3ddb-4410-bfbe-a374da9fbcdd
22 Dec: io9: A huge reservoir of meltwater has been discovered beneath Greenland
The researchers don’t know if the water will ever make its way to the ocean.
“It depends on whether it is currently connected to a system that is draining into the ocean or if it is a bit isolated and completely acting as a storage source without a current connection,” said Forster. “We don’t know the answer to this right now. It’s massive, it’s a new system we haven’t seen before — we need to understand it more completely if we are to predict sea level rise.”…
http://io9.com/a-huge-reservoir-of-meltwater-has-been-discovered-benea-1488508774

here’s some good news for the festive season:
20 Dec: Scientific American: Reuters: Damaged Reefs Show Resiliency in Cayman Islands
A 13-year study of coral reefs spontaneously recovering in the Cayman Islands offers hope of refuting often doomsday forecasts about the worldwide decline of the colorful marine habitat…
Scientists monitoring the Cayman reefs noted a 40 percent decline in live coral cover between 1999 and 2004 during a period of warmer seas in the Caribbean.
However, seven years later, the amount, size and density of the live coral had returned to 1999 levels as sea temperatures eased, according to Tom Frazer, professor of aquatic ecology at the University of Florida and part of the research team.
“People have said these systems don’t have a chance,” Frazer told Reuters. “What we are saying is: ‘Hey, this is evidence they do have a chance.'”…
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=damaged-reefs-show-resiliency-in-ca

davidmhoffer says:
December 23, 2013 at 10:39 am
Steven Mosher says:
December 23, 2013 at 9:48 am
I’m not so sure this fellow is fully versed on climatology.?
hmm. are you talking about Ross mcKittrick? Steve McIntyre?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I don’t recall either claiming to be versed in climatology. Their claims have been entirely about the mishandling of data analysis and statistics in climate papers. I don’t need a degree in physics to point out that if a paper is predicated on 2+2=5.39 that it is wrong.
You have a great deal of knowledge to share. It is too bad that you choose instead condescension and misdirection.
—————————————————————————————
+3

Sorry, I forgot the soot and Venus link
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha05400j.html

Fine point indeed John !,when you can’t correlate the daily temperature fluctuation within a 24 hour period with one rotation of the planet and keep them in step day in and day out then the issue is not a global climate problem,it is a very troubled era populated by people too blinkered and too vicious to see the point.
The fact is that the imagined imbalance between days and rotations was created out of the first attempt to model the motions of the Earth using the emerging technology of accurate watches just as they now try to model climate using the emerging technology of computers. I will even show you the offending original statement which went on to constitute rotating celestial sphere science –
“.. our clocks kept so good a correspondence with the Heavens that I doubt it not but they would prove the revolutions of the Earth to be isochronical [constant]..” John Flamsteed 1677
He may as well have said the Earth is flat because the expanded qualifiers disprove such a notion,these qualifiers are that a star returns in 23 hours 56 minutes 04 seconds of an average 24 hour cycle within a 365/365/365/366 day framework. It is not that,so enchanted were men by their use of a watch to extract the motions of the Earth that they are still willing to ignore an impossible imbalance between days and rotations even when common sense should intervene.
You are bound together by hatred of each other and not an attempt to elevate the standards for climate science so forget about fine points,when a society can’t support the most basic experience of temperature fluctuations and its rotational cause within a 24 hour period then all other issues fade into irrelevance.

There are only two sources of heat for our atmosphere, that from below and that big shiny ball in the sky. Neither can be perfectly constant. How can people accept paychecks for this stuff?

Another clumsy, shabby, foregone-conclusion driven piece of drivel. The authors of this paper should be embarrassed at how obvious their errors are even to the uninitiated.

Well CO2 is rising, and solar activity is falling, so we’ll soon see which is in control. Unfortunately there’s no penalty in academia for being wrong (eg. your pension is cut by a third for every wrong prediction). It would remove the need for peer review. People’s language would be a lot more measured. It might cramp academic expression, but who cares? Who needs wild speculation anyway? It’s costing me money.

I think that the disclaimer is in the main claim:
“Climate change has not been strongly influenced by variations in heat from the sun”.
I cannot recall anyone seriously claiming that variations in heat from the sun have had much effect on the temperature of earth. Indeed, I seem to recall discussions regarding the mechanisms which had allowed earth to be warm in the distant past when the sun was probably providing significantly less heat. It is my understanding that claims of significant effects from solar variations have to do with indirect causes such as magnetic fields which may allow significant variations in the effect of cosmic rays on cloud formation. My suspicious nature may be showing, but is it possible that the study was deliberately designed to consider only one insignificant solar variation so that the desired claim could be obtained?

“a new scientific study shows.” Uh huh. How about a “really, really, reeeeally, certainly, indisputably sciencey, scientific study.”

How to damn a study without actually examining it using hard science:
‘I’m not so sure this fellow is fully versed on climatology. His papers up to 2011 were all about cosmology, then all of the sudden he starts publishing on climatology issues.’
I imagine that all those ‘…not fully versed in climatology…’ who regularly do guest posts on WUWT will be quaking in their shoes – particularly comsmologists who are ascribing climate change to cosmic rays. But perhaps you are right after all. Perhaps, if we excluded all those without a strong background in peer-reviewed climatology journals, there would be not nearly as much junk commentary confusing the scientific issues.
‘One wonders if his previous funding dried up to make such a dramatic shift in study.’
Well, ‘wondering’ provides a profound insight into the quality of the science in this study, doesn’t it?
‘Then there is: “…climatic fingerprints of high and low solar forcing derived from model simulations…”. IPCC Models haven’t been able to reproduce the last ten years; what makes them think they are worth anything 100-200 years ago?’
Models are used for every single large-scale and complex human activity – from ship building to space craft, to planning commercial airliner flights, to predicting pork belly futures, to predicting seasonal rainfall and temperatures for crop planning.

Peter Miller says:

I note that these guys have a forcing impact for today’s CO2 levels of 1.5Wm2, which is just a little less than the change in the Sun’s measured irradiation over its 11 year cycle.

No…You are presumably using solar irradiance data that is measured in terms of W/m^2. That is per m^2 where the Earth intercepts an amount equal to pi*R^2. The W/m^2 forcing that CO2 causes is per m^2 of the Earth’s surface, which has 4*pi*R^2 of surface area. Hence, you have to divide the change in solar irradiance by 4 to get the amount per m^2 of the Earth’s surface.
Furthermore, not all of the incident radiation from the sun is absorbed by the Earth…About 30% gets reflected…So, you have to then multiply by a factor of 0.7. So, in fact, the forcing from the solar cycle is a lot smaller. It is also worth noting that its effect is further reduced by thermal inertia effects…I.e., the 11-year cycle is fast enough that the Earth is not able to equilibrate with the current solar forcing and this causes a further dampening of the solar effect. (You see this even more dramatically for the diurnal cycle: After all, on a local scale, the solar irradiance goes to zero every night but the temperatures don’t plummet accordingly. Part of this is attributable to the transport of heat around the surface but a lot (probably most) is due to thermal inertia effects.

A couple of posters have responded to my comment on models.They made points about models and general and some models in particular. These points may, or may not, be reasonable.
But these comments miss my point: if you want to diss a particular model, for whatever set of reasons, you have to diss the model being questioned… not some other model(s).
The next step along this slippery slope – dissing all models simply because they are models – is simply unsustainable. Our civilization would grind to a very rapid and messy halt without the constant application of myriad models.

Nic Lewis says:
December 23, 2013 at 2:46 pm
1. Nicola Scafetta wrote:
“If hockey-stick like temperature reconstructions are used, then the solar signature is very small.”
I’m not sure that applies here – their detection and attribution analysis, according to Tables S2 and S3, was based on regressions over 1000-1900 and 1450-1900, before the blade of the hockey stick takes off.
*********************
No, Nic, That is irrelevant.
The hockey-stick like temperature reconstructions claim that the temperature before 1900 varied very little, about 0.2-0.3 C. If the temperature varied so little from the MWP and the LIA then solar changes could only effect climate little, by 0.1-0.2 C, the vocanos get another ~0.1-0.2 C. This is independent of what happens after 1900.
The new temperature reconstructions present a much larger preindustrial variability from MWP to LIA (0.6 C and above). In this situation the solar effects must be increased to about 0.5 C (and above), while the volcano cannot be increased because the volcano cooling spikes provide an upper limit.
Read my recent papers, for example.
Scafetta N., 2013. Discussion on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming. Pattern Recognition in Physics, 1, 37–57. (open access)
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/1/37/2013/prp-1-37-2013.html
Scafetta, N. 2013. Discussion on climate oscillations: CMIP5 general circulation models versus a semi-empirical harmonic model based on astronomical cycles. Earth-Science Reviews 126, 321-357.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825213001402

climateace says:
December 23, 2013 at 5:59 pm
But these comments miss my point: if you want to diss a particular model, for whatever set of reasons, you have to diss the model being questioned… not some other model(s).
The next step along this slippery slope – dissing all models simply because they are models – is simply unsustainable.
_________
I only diss models that have been, without fail, complete and utter failures for over twenty years — which means I only diss climate models.
Imagine if jets were crashing every time they took off for twenty years and running, and the aeronautical engineers defended their models by looking for “the missing lift”.
It’s laughable and beyond defense.
Your straw man argument is as weak as the models you defend.

Another recent paper worth debunking was reported by the Guardian and Wired UK:
Billion-dollar climate denial network exposed: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-12/21/denial
Author Robert Brulle teaches Critical Theory, related to Marxism and Postmodernism. Basically an social pseudo-science activist.

climateace says:
December 23, 2013 at 5:59 pm
…The next step along this slippery slope – dissing all models simply because they are models – is simply unsustainable. Our civilization would grind to a very rapid and messy halt without the constant application of myriad models.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
Models are only as good as the data and formula used to build them and they are completely worthless if they are not validated by actual real life experimental data.
As a chemist in manufacturing I have generated that experimental data to validate the computer models I helped designed.
We tossed out a heck of a lot of models because experimental data showed they were complete garbage. This is the critical step missing in IPCC climate science. The last assessment report show the climate models need to be tossed on the scrap heap but that is not what is happening. Instead they get renamed ‘projections’ and used to determine the economic policies of whole countries.

Coming in late….”poorly-written press release” doesn’t cover it. GIGO. This has got to be one of the most brilliant bit of junk science for 2013, hasn’t it? “See? It’s not the sun. Poopy buml nya nya nya.”

Figure S7 of this paper has the MWP about completely deleted, also practically deleting the pre-1790 portion of the LIA, in an absurd hockey stick. This paper’s temperature history and model verification is way wrong.
GIGO applies: Fit something to match garbage, and garbage is the result.
The paper includes for figure S1 a partial albedo history in which ice cover, natural vegetation change, and cloud cover change going into the Little Ice Age is not depicted but yet human influence on cropland versus forest is depicted, classic for CAGW-movement authors for whom natural influences are to be understated compared to manmade ones.
And more could be listed wrong with it, including the classic superfluous model tactic to avoid showing all work in the paper itself, to hide more BS where readers don’t see it.
Of a little side interest despite the junk in other sections, their volcanic reconstruction has times of exceptional volcanic activity at each of the four solar Grand Minimum points they mark with arrows in Figure S6, quite like people of a very, very different perspective who argue for a magnetic coupling mechanism. However, trying to explain the history including at the decadal scale and later in http://img250.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=45311_expanded_overview2_122_15lo.jpg with volcanic eruptions rather than the solar-cosmic-ray forcing illustrated there many times over would be an exercise in ludicrousness (or in lack of honesty which is practically a filter for whether an educated individual may like and be inclined to support the CAGW movement).
As Dergachev et al 2004 noted (full-text online copy of paper at location noted within previous link), known data proves that, primarily solar-modulated, “cosmic rays were the main factor” changing the climate over thousands of years. As Shaviv 2005 noted, the natural contribution from such “comes out to be 0.5 +/- 0.2K out of the observed 0.6 +/- 0.2K global warming” over the past century.

Their reference point is a model.
Isnt is wonderful to live in such a fantasy world, where reality is defined first by how one wants to define it, and then the cause of this invented reality can be deduced. If that is how these people really think, there is little hope for them.
As Seinfeld would say, thats how people think in the bizarro world, not the real one.

TomRude (December 23, 2013 at 10:18 pm) “It is remarkable that the solar expert here who brings such luminary articles to the forefront and eats CO2 for breakfast can’t explain what process that CO2 is influencing weather through, especially during a season, for instance boreal winter, that will see variations bringing hemispheric cold waves for about two weeks and then a reprieve and then again gripping cold etc… ”
I don’t think anyone here claims CO2 influences weather. There is a diffuse effect from CO2 with only a small seasonal variation, no diurnal variation and no variation over regions or two week intervals. If anything, CO2 should have a moderating effect on weather.

My own research indicates that in the period 1900 to 1920 industrial activity was insufficient to make much impact on global atmospheric CO2 and the research of others has indicated that the use of fossil fuel did not begin to impact much the level of atmospheric CO2 until after 1950.
Based on what evidence ? and puleeze don’t say models.

Nik Lewis says: “4. The paper suffers, so far as I can tell, from the usual climate science defect of failure to archive the data and computer code used, making it difficult, probably impossible, to verify the results.”
Which makes the study about as credible as Piers Corbyn’s work.

SAMURAI says:
December 23, 2013 at 6:40 pm
The Sun is currently in its lowest solar cycle since 1906 and it peaked this year, so it only weakens from here.
Over the past 20 years, solar activity has been falling at its fastest pace in 10,000 years,….

Yet global temperatures are still higher than 20 years ago. Perhaps the Edinburgh paper may have a point after all.

Hi Climateace,

The authors used a single model – not a lot of models. No-one on this string has actually had a close look at the model. Yet all relevant posters have had no hesitation in dissing it.
My point stands. Until someone unpicks the model used, then no-one is in a position to diss it.

I certainly haven’t had a close look at the model, that’s correct. You complain that I shouldn’t diss the model without first inspecting it closely? Diss is a fun but vague word. If memory serves it means ‘disrespect’? Well, I don’t think I’m doing that. I’m not disrespecting anything, I just don’t accept by default that a model is good because somebody says so. Further, I don’t think the burden is on me to validate the model.
If somebody comes and tells me they’ve got a model that accurately models something, if they want me to believe that their model accurately models something they are going to have to show me how they verified and validated the model. I have neither time or inclination to try to get through that mountain of work (because it is pretty darn difficult to validate some models) regarding every model and claim I bump into. For free. On my own time. No thanks! If somebody can’t show me up front evidence that they verified that the model is accurate and useful in some well defined context, then they can go fish.
Now, you can stick your fingers in your ears all day long and say ‘la la la, my point stands.’ Your argument is not persuasive, because it shifts the burden of work that should properly have been done by the scientist to anybody who cares to question the scientists claim. At least, I don’t find it persuasive. Besides, sticking your fingers in your ears and saying ‘la la la’ is annoying. It’s going to get you on Santa’s naughty list and you’ll end up with a bag of solid fossil fuel for Christmas if you’re not careful, so go on and be good for goodness sakes!

I read the abstract of the paper, and also the abstracts of some of the papers he references in this paper.
This appears to be the upshot of the argument:
“Estimates of solar radiative ‘forcings’ are ‘poorly constrained’ (i.e., all over the place, by as much as an order of magnitude). We have created models of Greenhouse Gas ‘radiative forcings’ that are more consistent and also account for observed temperatures. Therefore the GHG forcings are what are causing the temperatures.”
Come on, really? Give me a break.