Via Roger Pielke Sr. climatescience blog:
At the December 2008 NRC meeting “Detection and Attribution of Solar Forcing on Climate” [see] there was extensive criticism by Gavin Schmidt and others on the research of Nicola Scafetta with respect to solar climate forcings. He was not, however, invited to that December meeting.
There is now a new paper that he has published that needs to be refuted or supported by other peer reviewed literature (rather than comments in a closed NRC meeting in which the presentors would not share their powerpoint talks).
The new paper is
Scafetta N., R. C. Willson (2009), ACRIM-gap and TSI trend issue resolved using a surface magnetic flux TSI proxy model, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L05701, doi:10.1029/2008GL036307.
The abstract reads
“The ACRIM-gap (1989.5-1991.75) continuity dilemma for satellite TSI observations is resolved by bridging the satellite TSI monitoring gap between ACRIM1 and ACRIM2 results with TSI derived from Krivova et al.’s (2007) proxy model based on variations of the surface distribution of solar magnetic flux. ‘Mixed’ versions of ACRIM and PMOD TSI composites are constructed with their composites’ original values except for the ACRIM gap, where Krivova modeled TSI is used to connect ACRIM1 and ACRIM2 results. Both ‘mixed’ composites demonstrate a significant TSI increase of 0.033%/decade between the solar activity minima of 1986 and 1996, comparable to the 0.037% found in the ACRIM composite. The finding supports the contention of Willson (1997) that the ERBS/ERBE results are flawed by uncorrected degradation during the ACRIM gap and refutes the Nimbus7/ERB ACRIM gap adjustment Fröhlich and Lean (1998) employed in constructing the PMOD.”
A key statement in the conclusion reads
“This finding has evident repercussions for climate change and solar physics. Increasing TSI between 1980 and 2000 could have contributed significantly to global warming during the last three decades [Scafetta and West, 2007, 2008]. Current climate models [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007] have assumed that the TSI did not vary significantly during the last 30 years and have therefore underestimated the solar contribution and overestimated the anthropogenic contribution to global warming.”
Interestingly, TSI has been on a slight downtrend in the past few years as we get closer to solar minimum. The graph below is from the ACRIM project page.
Click for a large image
It remains to be seen if we have hit the minimum yet.
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I think Scafetta is onto something.
Having spent a couple of hours trying to absorb
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v3.pdf
Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics
Authors: Gerhard Gerlich, Ralf D. Tscheuschner
By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 degrees Celsius is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.
this paper also covers similar territory to Scarfetta, some I dont agree with but a good overview.
Another nail in the coffin for those who believe in AGW. Just a pity it is such a technical paper that it is not likely to be headline news on any media outlets.
Interesting to note that even Leif’s TSI track albeit much reducing TSI variability from previous estimates still preserves the match between lower TSI and observed cool periods.
I accept that the match is not perfect but the lack of perfection could well, in my opinion, be a result of ocean cycle variability.
However small the TSI variability actually is there really does seem to be a closer match to climate changes than anything in the CO2 measurements.
The current absence of a generally accepted mechanism is not good grounds for denying the existence of a relationship.
J recall reading a heated exchange between Willson and I think Judith Lean (don’t quote) in a blog a few years ago. It was pertaining to this very subject of ACRIM vs PMOD.
Willson flat out stated PMOD is flawed was being used to promote AGW. Maybe this paper is an outgrowth of that discussion.
Here is a comparison of Frolich and lean with Willson(1997) TSI reconstruction.
http://home.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/TSI_FLvsW.gif
Lindsay H
” there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects,”
You have tried reading this first…..
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/25/a-short-primer-the-greenhouse-effect-explained/
There is a greenhouse effect, though not the strawman you have attacked. CO2 does play a role. The debate is how much of a role, does it explain the recent warming and how much of a role will it play in the future. Papers like the above are what makes this debtate worth following.
This on Guardian front page
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/14/al-gore-climate-change1
Quotes:
“Gore, awarded an Oscar for his 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, held private talks with Obama in December in which they reportedly discussed the “green” components of the $787bn US stimulus package signed into law on 17 February.”
Tell me how an unelected person like Gore who isn’t a scientist or engineer is allowed to decide, in secret, where US taxpayer money should go?
“Gore says he has also detected a shift in the view of many business leaders. “They’re seeing the writing on every wall they look at. They’re seeing the complete disappearance of the polar ice caps right before their eyes in just a few years,” he says. ”
He is living on another planet. Will the media not take issue with what he says?
Responding to James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia theory, who said the European trading system for carbon was “disastrous”, Gore says: “James Lovelock has forgotten more about science than I will ever learn.
The founder of Gaia and the profiteer of Gaia have issues with each other. As much as I disagree with Lovelock’s theory of Gaia (it is a theory that I once believed independently years ago and no longer believe) he should fight back against Gore’s rude remark above and he should criticise those who have taken his theories and created a full blown cult.
I can feel the agonizing pain they feel, because they can report nothing, nothing and nothing again, except the ocasional streaking comet…
“If there were any sunspots, you’d see them there.”
http://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/pickoftheweek/old/13mar2009/
Considering the barnburning ramp of SC24 these days (another SC23 plage appears) we need something to sink teeth into.
Um . . . TSI . . . uh . . . right! Turbulent Static Irridescence. No? . . . . oh, sure . . . .uh . . . Troubling Senescent Indignation! No?
Maybe somebody could discuss what in the world this article is about. I understood nothing in it. I realize I am not UberEinstein, but most stuff here I can at least guess what it is about . . . a little help please?
That is interesting about the closed minds at work in the government agencies as revealed by Roger Pielke.
I have two contributions to make: one is about possibly fraudulent public officials; the other is about the Sun.
Fraud
In Australia, if government officials behaved like that –not funding policy relevant research because it would undermine their preferred policy perspective, they would be on the cusp of behaving fraudulently in relation to our Commonwealth Crimes Act.
According to Australian Senior Counsel, to commit fraud in terms of the Commonwealth Crimes Act is to intentionally create a situation prejudicially affecting the Commonwealth in which any of the following occurs:
• dishonestly causing economic loss to the Commonwealth;
• dishonestly influencing the exercise of a public duty;
• inducing the Commonwealth or a Commonwealth agency to do any act to its detriment.
Quite clearly, the government officials identified by Roger Pielke are trying to create a situation that would prejudicially affect the USA by inducing a US Government to do something to its detriment. The argument in support of this goes along the lines that if the solar science research was funded as others recommended it could produce results which undermined the IPCC hypothesis. If this was achieved, the US Government might not then enact policies which have prejudicial effects. Thus funding solar science research could produce results which would be beneficial to the US Government. Whether US legislation about fraud is similar to Australia’s and whether this fraud argument has a US analogue would be worth exploring by others skilled in US law.
There is also a plausible argument that if Australian officials acted like their US counterparts, they could be committing fraud by dishonestly influencing the exercise of public duty.
The Sun
The Sun affects climate dynamics in many more ways than merely electromagnetic radiation, even though this has been the predominant preoccupation of the scientific community that inquires into this phenomenon.
There is solar plasma, the Sun’s electromagnetic field and the electromagnetic structures created by the Sun in the Heliosphere. See Professor Brian Tinsley’s home page for a good way into this work (http://www.utdallas.edu/nsm/physics/faculty/tinsley.html ). His view is that about half of the global warming over the past century can be accounted for by the impact of the solar processes he and associates study.
Additionally, there is the gravitational interaction between the Sun and the Earth, especially, of course, the luni-solar tides. There is a substantial literature on this phenomenon, especially the 18.6 year lunar nodal cycle.
Given this multiplicity of processes, the interaction between them and between them and climate processes becomes a key consideration.
In the early years, before the seekers of the truth enabled their minds to be corrupted by the IPCC meme, US government agencies and NATO funded individual research projects as well as conferences that examined the totality of ways by means of which the Sun might regulate our climate.
Here are some of the conferences from 1961 to 1993. There were several more.
Solar variations, Climate Change, and Related Geophysical Problems, were published by the New York Academy of the Sciences: see Annals of the New York Academy of Science Vol 95, Art 1 pps 1 to 740 October 5, 1961.
Bandeen, William R., and Maran, Stephen P., Possible Relationships between Solar Activity and Meteorological Phenomena Proceedings of a Symposium held November 7 8, 1973 at the Goddard Space Flight Center February 15 1974. This symposium was dedicated to Dr Charles Greeley Abbot, a pre-eminent pioneer worker in the field of the measurement of the Sun’s output and the identification of Sun climate relationships. Dr Abbot, who was aged 101 at the time, addressed the conference, only to die five weeks later.
John R Herman and Richard A Goldberg Sun, Weather and Climate NASA 1978.
McCormac, Billy M., and Seliga, Thomas A., Solar Terrestrial Influences on Weather and Climate. Proceedings of a Symposium/Workshop held at the Fawcett Center for Tomorrow, The Ohio State University, Columbia, Ohio, 24 28 August 1978. D. Reidel Publishing Company 1979.
Elizabeth Nesme-Ribes (editor) The solar engine and its influence on terrestrial atmosphere and climate. Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop held in France October 25-29 1993. Published by Springer 1994. For some more history see http://www.agu.org/history/sv/articles/ARTL.html
Ok, after poking around a bit I found “Total Solar Irradiance”. Please try to expand the TLIs every so often for us TCNs.
Also the latest warming conference generated headlines about “Greenland melting faster than expected”. I’d love to see an analysis. I thought the latest evidence indicated that the amount of ice on Greenland has been growing.
Grant Hodges: TSI stands for Total Solar Irradiance.
Grant Hodges –“TSI” = Total Solar Irradiance, in other words the output of the Sun. The AGWers blithely assume this to have been invariant over the period in question, and thus not responsible for any significant portion of observed global warming in recent decades.
@ur momisugly Grant Hodges-
TSI= Total Solar Irradiance
Quite clearly, the government officials identified by Roger Pielke are trying to create a situation that would prejudicially affect the USA by inducing a US Government to do something to its detriment.
Economic suicide is the path by which government takes over various industries and then passes control of those industries to new elites. That’s what they did in the Soviet Union and still today in Russia.
That’s a Power Shift…ahem…Org.
Scafetta and Wilson findings coincide with those of Dr Nahle’s in Amplitude of Solar Irradiance and Change of Temperature:
“Last week, Nicola Scafetta and Richard C. Wilson published a peer reviewed paper in which they revealed a considerable Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) increase of 0.033 % per decade between the solar activity minima of 1986 and 1996, which is comparable to the 0.037 % found in the ACRIM composite. The data gathered by satellites, which were reported by Scafetta and Wilson, coincide with my theory of a correlation between the Amplitude of TSI and the Change of the Earth’s Tropospheric Temperature until 1998. In my article “Heat Stored by Greenhouse Gases”, I concluded that the fluctuation of the TSI of the last 300 years had been 1.25 W/m^2, causing a change of the Earth’s temperature of 0.56 °C, which is the maximum averaged change in tropospheric temperature achieved in the 1990s (the average of change of temperature in 1998 was 0.51 °C). The correlation resides in the total change since 1610 AD, which I had calculated was 1.25 W/m^2. The new findings fix the change at 1.32 W/m^2 which would produce a change of temperature of 0.594 °C, while the change I had calculated would produce a change of temperature of 0.56 °C. Nonetheless, both calculations of the changes of temperature based on the fluctuation of the TSI coincide with the natural change observed in 1998 (0.52°C) and with the total natural oscillation of temperature of -3 °C to 3 °C in the Holocene Period.”
http://biocab.org/Heat_Storage.html
http://biocab.org/Amplitude_Solar_Irradiance.html
Aron
“He is living on another planet. Will the media not take issue with what he says?”
Yes, he is living on another planet. Unfortunately it’s ours!
And it should be TLA (Three Letter Acronym), but what’s a TCN?
The two Scafetta and West links in the post above aren’t working. For those interested, the following links do work. They’re from Nicola Scafetta’s Curriculum Vitae webpage.
Scafetta and West 2007:
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/complexity2007.pdf
Scafetta and West 2008:
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/opinion0308.pdf
If memory serves me well, for the 2007 paper, Scafetta and West used Lean 2000 and Wang 2005 composites, which are now considered obsolete.
It’ll be interesting to read Scafetta’s upcoming paper (in press) “Total solar irradiance satellite composites and their phenomenological effect on climate.” To me, global temperatures during the period of the satellite composites are dominated by volcanic eruptions, ENSO, and ENSO aftereffects. With that in mind, will the paper illustrate a phenomenoloical explanation of the effects of solar on ENSO? We’ll have to wait and see.
Dorlomin,
Please read the paper Lindsay cited. I, also, was willing to concede some CO2 greenhouse effect until I just recently went through this paper. I found the paper to be well done and very thorough in its treatment.
Side note to George Smith from a previous thread: Yes, the 2nd Law was initially formulated dealing with cyclic engines, but the more modern formulation deals with the net increase in entropy by counting accessible microstates. I totally agree a single photon re-radiated from a CO2 molecule can approach the sun and be absorbed, thereby giving the appearance of violating the 2nd Law. However, a more appropriate model is that of two blackbodies at two different temperatures separated from each in the vacuum. They will each radiate and absorb photons from each other. However, the higher temperature BB will have a greater proportion of higher energy photons in its emission spectrum. The number of accessible microstates for the higher energy photons is greater when they are absorbed by the lower temperature BB. Eventually both will reach the same equilibrium temperature as required by the 2nd Law. As the above cited paper argues, to have a net flow of energy (heat) from a cooler object, atmospheric CO2, to a warmer object, the earth’s surface, without adding work to the system is essentially the same as the two BB model I just looked at. The one objection that I could see being raised here is that perhaps the net incoming solar flux could provide the “work” to run this refrigerator.
The paper has many more other lines of attack as Lindsay mentioned.
The key sentence IMHO is in their conclusion:
“[23] On a decadal scale, outside the ACRIM-gap period, KBS07 fails to reproduce the satellite data pattern and trend.”
I would not put much credence in their use of the KBS07 reconstruction to justify the data inside the ACRIM-gap.
The apparent decrease of PMOD TSI is likely an artifact, as
PMOD has also decreased relative to the [much better calibrated SORCE TSI] as shown here:
http://www.leif.org/research/Diff-PMOD-SORCE.png
with TSI derived from Krivova et al.’s (2007) proxy model based on variations of the surface distribution of solar magnetic flux.
The solar magnetic flux during solar cycle 23 was very much the same as in solar cycle 13, see e.g. the resulting Interplanetary Magnetic Field: http://www.leif.org/research/IMF-SC13-and%20SC23.png The blue diamonds show IMF observed by spacecraft for the current cycle shifted 107 years back, the green circles and curve show IMF inferred from geomagnetic observations for SC23 shifted, and the red curve shows IMF inferred the same way for SC13.
And if that were the basis for TSI, then TSI for SC13 [a hundred years ago] would also be similar to TSI during the last decade, and if that in turn drives the temperature, then the temperature back then should also be similar to 1996-2008. So, two things:
1) TSI has not changed since then
2) TSI does not drive the climate significantly [and please – no silly comments about turning off the Sun]
Grant Hodges (03:54:18) :
> Um . . . TSI . . . uh . . . right! Turbulent Static Irridescence. No? . . . . oh, sure . . . .uh . . . Troubling Senescent Indignation! No?
I agree there should have been a reference to total solar irradience.
One aid here is the oft-forgotten links at the top, in particular
the glossary, http://wattsupwiththat.com/glossary/
Worth checking them out from time to time. It would be nice if they
were cleaned up, improved, etc.
Stephen Wilde (00:54:36) :
Interesting to note that even Leif’s TSI track albeit much reducing TSI variability from previous estimates still preserves the match between lower TSI and observed cool periods.
I accept that the match is not perfect but the lack of perfection could well, in my opinion, be a result of ocean cycle variability.
Stephen,
If you understand where the numbers that show Leif’s TSI come from — sunspot numbers — then the match between Leif’s and the others is not surprising. The dispute, as I understand it, between Leif (and others?) and Lean (and others) is how to relate historical SSN’s to TSI. Regardless of whether you think you can see a match to ocean cycle variability, what you’ve got is more or less a perfect match to solar cycle variability — sunspot numbers — converted to estimates of TSI based on sunspot numbers.
And that graphic at the end of Anthony’s story doesn’t come from the Scafetta-Willson paper, or Peilke Sr.’s write up. It is just there, as stock imagery, to illustrate Anthony’s writeup.