UPDATED: This opinion piece from Professor Henrik Svensmark was published September 9th in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Originally the translation was from Google translation with some post translation cleanup of jumbled words or phrases by myself. Now as of Sept 12, the translation is by Nigel Calder. Hat tip to Carsten Arnholm of Norway for bringing this to my attention and especially for translation facilitation by Ágúst H Bjarnason – Anthony
Translation approved by Henrik Svensmark
While the Sun sleeps
Henrik Svensmark, Professor, Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen
“In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. And this means that the projections of future climate are unreliable,” writes Henrik Svensmark.
The star that keeps us alive has, over the last few years, been almost free of sunspots, which are the usual signs of the Sun’s magnetic activity. Last week [4 September 2009] the scientific team behind the satellite SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) reported, “It is likely that the current year’s number of blank days will be the longest in about 100 years.” Everything indicates that the Sun is going into some kind of hibernation, and the obvious question is what significance that has for us on Earth.
If you ask the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which represents the current consensus on climate change, the answer is a reassuring “nothing”. But history and recent research suggest that is probably completely wrong. Why? Let’s take a closer look.
Solar activity has always varied. Around the year 1000, we had a period of very high solar activity, which coincided with the Medieval Warm Period. It was a time when frosts in May were almost unknown – a matter of great importance for a good harvest. Vikings settled in Greenland and explored the coast of North America. On the whole it was a good time. For example, China’s population doubled in this period.
But after about 1300 solar activity declined and the world began to get colder. It was the beginning of the episode we now call the Little Ice Age. In this cold time, all the Viking settlements in Greenland disappeared. Sweden surprised Denmark by marching across the ice, and in London the Thames froze repeatedly. But more serious were the long periods of crop failures, which resulted in poorly nourished populations, reduced in Europe by about 30 per cent because of disease and hunger.
It’s important to realise that the Little Ice Age was a global event. It ended in the late 19th Century and was followed by increasing solar activity. Over the past 50 years solar activity has been at its highest since the medieval warmth of 1000 years ago. But now it appears that the Sun has changed again, and is returning towards what solar scientists call a “grand minimum” such as we saw in the Little Ice Age.
The match between solar activity and climate through the ages is sometimes explained away as coincidence. Yet it turns out that, almost no matter when you look and not just in the last 1000 years, there is a link. Solar activity has repeatedly fluctuated between high and low during the past 10,000 years. In fact the Sun spent about 17 per cent of those 10,000 years in a sleeping mode, with a cooling Earth the result.
You may wonder why the international climate panel IPCC does not believe that the Sun’s changing activity affects the climate. The reason is that it considers only changes in solar radiation. That would be the simplest way for the Sun to change the climate – a bit like turning up and down the brightness of a light bulb.
Satellite measurements have shown that the variations of solar radiation are too small to explain climate change. But the panel has closed its eyes to another, much more powerful way for the Sun to affect Earth’s climate. In 1996 we discovered a surprising influence of the Sun – its impact on Earth’s cloud cover. High-energy accelerated particles coming from exploded stars, the cosmic rays, help to form clouds.
When the Sun is active, its magnetic field is better at shielding us against the cosmic rays coming from outer space, before they reach our planet. By regulating the Earth’s cloud cover, the Sun can turn the temperature up and down. High solar activity means fewer clouds and and a warmer world. Low solar activity and poorer shielding against cosmic rays result in increased cloud cover and hence a cooling. As the Sun’s magnetism doubled in strength during the 20th century, this natural mechanism may be responsible for a large part of global warming seen then.
That also explains why most climate scientists try to ignore this possibility. It does not favour their idea that the 20th century temperature rise was mainly due to human emissions of CO2. If the Sun provoked a significant part of warming in the 20th Century, then the contribution by CO2 must necessarily be smaller.
Ever since we put forward our theory in 1996, it has been subjected to very sharp criticism, which is normal in science.
First it was said that a link between clouds and solar activity could not be correct, because no physical mechanism was known. But in 2006, after many years of work, we completed experiments at DTU Space that demonstrated the existence of a physical mechanism. The cosmic rays help to form aerosols, which are the seeds for cloud formation.
Then came the criticism that the mechanism we found in the laboratory could not work in the real atmosphere, and therefore had no practical significance. We have just rejected that criticism emphatically.
It turns out that the Sun itself performs what might be called natural experiments. Giant solar eruptions can cause the cosmic ray intensity on earth to dive suddenly over a few days. In the days following an eruption, cloud cover can fall by about 4 per cent. And the amount of liquid water in cloud droplets is reduced by almost 7 per cent. Here is a very large effect – indeed so great that in popular terms the Earth’s clouds originate in space.
So we have watched the Sun’s magnetic activity with increasing concern, since it began to wane in the mid-1990s.
That the Sun might now fall asleep in a deep minimum was suggested by solar scientists at a meeting in Kiruna in Sweden two years ago. So when Nigel Calder and I updated our book The Chilling Stars, we wrote a little provocatively that “we are advising our friends to enjoy global warming while it lasts.”
In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. Mojib Latif from the University of Kiel argued at the recent UN World Climate Conference in Geneva that the cooling may continue through the next 10 to 20 years. His explanation was a natural change in the North Atlantic circulation, not in solar activity. But no matter how you interpret them, natural variations in climate are making a comeback.
The outcome may be that the Sun itself will demonstrate its importance for climate and so challenge the theories of global warming. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. And this means that the projections of future climate are unreliable. A forecast saying it may be either warmer or colder for 50 years is not very useful, and science is not yet able to predict solar activity.
So in many ways we stand at a crossroads. The near future will be extremely interesting. I think it is important to accept that Nature pays no heed to what we humans think about it. Will the greenhouse theory survive a significant cooling of the Earth? Not in its current dominant form. Unfortunately, tomorrow’s climate challenges will be quite different from the greenhouse theory’s predictions. Perhaps it will become fashionable again to investigate the Sun’s impact on our climate.
–
Professor Henrik Svensmark is director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at DTU Space. His book The Chilling Stars has also been published in Danish as Klima og Kosmos Gads Forlag, DK ISBN 9788712043508)
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“”” Tenuc (00:47:50) :
If only the climate of earth were so simple that major changes depended just on one factor. Unfortunately this simplistic view is wrong, and our chaotic climate depends on multiple interlinked mechanisms to keep it within the bounds of a few degrees of temperature variability we usually see.
The Svensmark theory may well be correct, but like CO2 caused AGW, I’m sure it will not turn out to be the sole mechanism. However, with Copenhagen around trhe corner, it’s good to see some publicity which shows the CO2 theory is very weak and perhaps help stop global Cap & Trade being adopted. “””
I don’t think anyone; including Dr Svensmark has ever suggested that his theory is a complete explanation of “climate change”.
Does the term “natural variability” mean anything to anyone ?
Svensmark’s cosmic ray thesis, is simply one component of “natural variability”; that is all he is saying.
And Frank Wentz (RSS) et al “How Much More Rain will Global Warming Bring ?” SCIENCE July-7-2007 pretty much points to the negative feedback control loop that depends solely on the physical properties of H2O; and that is what holds earth’s temperature range in a comfortable range, that is NOT controllable by humans.
So sad that basic problem solving logic skills aren’t taught in school any more.
George
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/2009/08/27/new-10be-study-confirms-14c-record/
Stephen Wilde (23:48:17) :
When the Sun goes quiet, we here on Earth experience more of the effects of Galactic influence, which is never quite totally overriden by the Sun.
The solar modulation is only a few percent, and the Galactic influence does not vary on a time scale of centuries or faster”
Leif,
That was not my comment. It was from rbateman.
I agree with you about the sun on shorter time scales and only disagree on century or multi century time scales.
Luboš Motl (07:55:34) :
“It must be annoying for Svensmark if their mechanism – which is almost certainly one of the most important insights of climatology in decades – is being largely ignored because of a paranoid politicized cult that prefers the explanations with a big potential to influence politics over the explanations that are supported by the objective evidence.
Nice article”.
Thanks Luboš, I could not agree more.
Re: Gene Nemetz (07:59:31) :
Mike McMillan (03:34:03) : “The CO2 chart climb is as steady as you get, but the global temperature it’s supposed to be driving seem pretty oblivious to it….About the only things keeping pace with CO2 are the GISS adjustments.”
“Nice way to put it.”
—
Disagree. The rise in [CO2] is not the only thing driving global temperature. It is only by far the most important. But there is no reason to believe the rise should be strictly linear. Just as there is no reason to believe that year-to-year temperature variability was always zero before 1900.
If CO2-levels were at those of 1900, 2007 and maybe 2008 should have become close to the coldest on record: deep solar minimum + powerful La Niña + two volcanoes. Instead they made it to the top 10% warmest. Stronger evidence for GW is hard to get by.
I hadn’t ever wasted time on Tamino’s blog before, so I looked at it. Funny, he seems to have dedicated almost every post to complaining about WUWT. The number of views and traffic here must be driving him crazy.
I have a feeling he took the fall of the “Green Jobs Czar” pretty hard.
REPLY: Actually what is going on is that he’s acting out his anger over his inability to do something about the thorough falsification that he’s been getting by Lucia over his two box model. Since he can’t refute her conclusions about his failure and his violating the second law of thermodynamics, he attacks what he considers to be an easy target to prop up his ego. His pattern is quite predictable. He did the same thing with the Ian Jolife incident, and when McIntyre took him to task here and here. He couldn’t refute either of those so he let loose a barrage of angry posts about me and WUWT readers. He calls Lucia a petulant child, but can’t come to grips with the facts of the situation. While he does make some valid points, his approach is totally angry and antisocial. I find his posts amusing and yet sad. – Anthony
Graeme Rodaughan (23:47:21) says “Refreshing. Now if only the Politicians were paying attention…”
We are Graeme.
Coupled with solar wind effects, iris effect, basic irradiance and cosmic ray interference it starts to add up to a meaningful and repeated if unpredictable influence. Ocean currents may effect only short-term patterns (i.e. 1-100 years) but still have to get that heat from somewhere. Volcanic activities cause pinpricks in the record. Other factors, including man’s activities could just be generating further noise. Since even the range of sensitivities of any of these is unknown, projection is futile.
UK Sceptic (01:05:16) repeats the often heard “…the UK’s politicians are as dumb as rocks when it comes to science…”
We know, that’s why we are paying attention.
Incidentally, I was disappointed that “The survey also found that: 39% thought leading experts still questioned the causes of climate change”. It is a fact that some of them do. Why do 61% not believe an easily demonstrable fact?
Mick (01:46:48) “Folks, all this science is OK, but I’m afraid it’s irrelevant…Unfortunately the ignorant public has a mob mentality, the loudest megaphone wins…”
Half right Mick. Science by itself will not win the argument although making the public less ignorant is eventually the solution.
This is a facts verses hyperbole war rather than a religious one. (You cannot actually disprove a pure religion – and why would you want to?)
Just keep making sure the facts are heard.
To Fred Lightfoot (02:44:03)
Sir, with all that you have said I respectfully agree. Time for change.
(Unless you will accept silk as milk from butterflies – OK I’m pushing it)
While we are on butterflies – the butterfly effect (see how I did that) means that all of us effect the climate every time we step on a blade of grass, eat a morsel or take a breath. Everyone in this country and on every nation on earth. Including those who are not talking to us at the moment. That – times about 7billion – is what we need to “control” to moderate anthropological effects. While we are waiting for that to happen – prepare for the worst (either way) and live with it.
(PS Moths – I know)
Ron de Haan (08:35:58) :
“RR Kampen,
“Because now you are placing his remarks out of the context.”
Knowing some of his writings, I doubt that.
“I would be careful with that, especially because this is not a scientific report…”
Okay, you may be right; but then my remark is not for Svensmark but for the quote I took.
As for the translation, no worries. I can read Danish and the translation of the quote I took is correct.
Scott A. Mandia (07:39:41) should really get some sort of prize for packing so much misinformation into his posts. For example:
May I deconstruct? Thank you:
I can’t recall anyone here taking the position that greenhouse gases have no effect. But by attempting to re-frame the argument that way, Mandia tries to corner skeptics. That doesn’t work here, as he is finding out.
The real question is, how little effect does CO2 have [and keep in mind that the alarmist contingent has hung their hats on CO2 as the trigger for runaway global warming; rarely do we hear from them about other GHG’s like H2O, etc.] The climate’s sensitivity to CO2 is much lower than the UN/IPCC/alarmist crowd admits. The planet is clearly telling us that CO2 is an insignificant player in global temperatures. So who should we listen to? Scott Mandia? Or Planet Earth? I prefer to listen to the one with no agenda.
And: ‘modern day global warming’?? What is that supposed to mean?? What Mandia is trying to do with that sentence is convey the false impression that natural climate variability has ended, and global warming caused by CO2 has taken over. Wrong. It’s all natural variability, just as it was when CO2 was twenty times higher than it is now.
Next, ‘long term residence of CO2’ has been pretty well falsified, despite some frantic alarmist attempts to prop up the claims of 200+ year persistence. Again: Wrong. Studies of carbon isotopes from the South Pacific nuclear tests have shown a very short CO2 persistence. Physicist Freeman Dyson has written on this, and gives a CO2 residency time of about twelve years. Since CO2 persistence in the atmosphere is so short, there can be no hidden “heat in the pipeline” from it. So who to believe, Prof Freeman Dyson? Or Scott Mandia? That’s an easy one, isn’t it?
And constantly referring to the truly disreputable “Tamino” is just an appeal to a fake authority. Why is Tamino so filled with jealousy, hatred and bile toward WUWT? Simple: because Tamino didn’t even make the semi-finals in the Weblog Awards: click. He’s way down on the Wikio list, too [WUWT is #2]. And that other government-run, censoring echo chamber, realclimate, got only one-tenth the votes of WUWT. Those alarmist sites failed for one simple reason: the truth is not in them, and people know it.
I had to laugh at Mandia’s impotent barking: “…be very careful if you intend to tap Tamino’s bees nest. You will likely be coming to a gun fight armed with a knife.” Tamino is a despicable worm, who avidly reads this site every day, consumed by envy and hatred. He sits in his echo chamber cave, waiting to pounce on anyone’s post that doesn’t kiss up to him with unwarranted flattery. Like most alarmist sites, Tamino heavily censors all but the most pro-AGW, adulation filled posts. [Contrast Tamino’s constant commenting about WUWT on his site, with the lack of concern seen here. The subject of Tamino comes up rarely, like Mandia’s reference to Tamino today. Otherwise, nobody pays attention to Tamino, and that galls him no end.]
Mr. Mandia’s misplaced worship of “Tamino” is not arguable, since it is only his opinion. But it should be pointed out that Mandia gets to post here as often as he likes — while numerous posters here have commented over the years that their polite, well-meaning, science oriented posts were deleted by Tamino simply because they didn’t track the Party line, or butt kiss him sufficiently. Mandia has picked a pretty insecure HE-RO to worship.
Have I tapped Tamino’s beehive hard enough with those statements? Should I be worried about Tamino’s response?
Nah. He’s a wuss.
“”” Juraj V. (07:47:14) :
dorlomin (07:05:19) :
The earth is warmer than it should be due to its atmospehre, a phenominem known as the greenhouse effect. “””
That is an absurd statement.
The earth is exactly as warm as it should be; and it stays exactly as warm as it should be 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, 24 hours per day, 365 1/4 days per year, and year in and year out for the last 4.5 or so billion years; it has never deviated from being as warm as it should be.
That man in his idiocy continues to think it should not be as warm as it is, is where the whole problem lies.
George
Fred Lightfoot (02:44:03):
You must have been an ex-Shell colleague of mine.
Your telling stories will be construed by the alarmists as a proof that climate change is playing havoc with our fragile world.
Hello all!!
I have been in hiatas from the wuwt wourld, but I should add, I was recently speaking to a class of high school algorites,and brought this webpage up on the big screen.
(I was brought in as the counter debate to global warming)
It was like shooting fish in a barrel.
The group was comprised of some very promising young minds, and were at once stupified by the powerful arguments for intelligent debate.. and FACTS!! that are here to be found.
by the debates end.. the teacher and organizer literally cursed me(sigh, i dare say I might have provoked it) but the majority of the kids were listening.
I left to the sounds of intense debate of the FACTS, and was delighted that it was entirely do to the posts here, and they no longer thought the science was decided.
To all that post the amazing articles here, and the sharp minds that comment on them, I say well done.
In 5 years, it will be obvious to anyone with a brain that AGW-theory is dead. I expect Gore, Hansen and possibly Mann to be the lone holdouts. (Just wait!!! It’ll be back as soon as this Ice Age is over!!!)
Scott A. Mandia (08:26:35) :
“@ur momisugly Ron de Haan (07:28:52) :
Next time I will write “sarcasm” in quotes next to a comment so that it is well understood to be just that.
I have certainly not read all of your posts on WUWT, but are you this concerned for the welfare of the world’s population if in fact, as most experts suggest, AGW is occurring? If you are truly the humanist you claim to be then you should be concerned either way.
I know this comment doesn’t really add to the discussion but sometimes a guy just has to defend himself. I think it should be clear by now that the reason I post here (and on many other blogs) is because I am very concerned about our future and am willing to take the potshots in order to reach a few folks who I believe are being misled”.
Scot,
Well Scott,
I have read your spin postings and now you are doing it again.
You truly master the verbal skills to a level that would make a second hand car sales man blush from envy.
Don’t waste your AGW Consensus mantra and your “humanist” act on me you shameless AH.
If you’re real objective is to warn people who you believe are misled and need your protection, you are wasting your time on this blog.
Dorlomin. I have no time for error bars – they are too wide. If we cannot say with ANY certainty what the temperature will be then why bother? As a layman, I find such error bars a nonsense, and didn’t realise until a while ago that science worked on such things. I take your point that the current flatline/cooling might be a “idiocyncratic movement”, then again it might not be!
Yes we understand that the Earth is warmer than it would otherwise be without its Greenhouse Gases, but we do not know what will happen when we increase one – and one that is very minor to water vapour. We don’t know if we’ll have a positive effect (as the science says) or whether, for example, we’ll have increased cloud cover leading to cooling. Like I said, we appear to have checks and balances within the climate system that we do not understand.
I must be a ‘real sceptic’ then – according to your criteria, because although I’m not really a sceptic of CO2 forcing, I am a sceptic of what will result. We don’t understand what happens within the climate system, and we’re only just realising what part ocean currents may have played in recent warming – more learning then!
Scepticism SHOULD be easy and natural for a scientist, but it would appear that many scientists are taking correlation as causation, and worse – starting out with a pre-conceived notion, and then trying to prove it correct. Surely, this is not science? In the past week we had a scientist (a scientist!) saying “Maybe the Earth is trying to tell us something”. Lovelock’s bizarre comments in the past have left me breathless, but this?
I think we will one day fully understand how the climate system works, but I believe that day to be decades into the future – seriously. If you remove the ’98 El Nino there has been no statistically-significant warming since 1995. That’s a long time, Dorlomin! What we’re experiencing is nothing unusual at all – nor unprecedented. But returning to my original point, we really have no idea, and we should stop making out we do. I see no warming to be worried about at all (certainly not here in England!) and a decadel rate of 0.12 within the troposphere isn’t going to keep me awake at nights. At some point the Warmists are going to have to re-evaluate their convictions, and start back-peddling. We’ve seen this week some saying we’re in for 20 years of cooling before man-made warming returns! Oh dear! Some just don’t get it, do they? Cooling is natural – warming is man-made. Has science come to this?
“If AGW is not a concern and we are heading for a new ice age we can rest?”
This statement alone makes me want to reach through my monitor and strangle someone. Rest? Are you kidding me? How about we get to work on how to feed 7+billion people as the planet cools, once farmable land becomes too cold to grow anything, and crops begin to fail worldwide? How about we divert the trillions of $$$ spent on AGW research to that?
Life would be quite a bit more pleasant if the warming would continue…..
On the Tamino point, I commented there, and found his attitude, shall we say ‘odd’. I certainly wouldn’t be comfortable in his presence. It’s okay to get annoyed, but it’s quite another to brow-beat someone with angry, childish ranting. Ungentlemanly.
Flanagan wrote:
A very mysterious mechanism indeed. And still not supported by any observation. Moreover, how is it the sun is “fading” since the 90ies and all we got is a warming? Even 20 years later? 2009 is not going to be a cold year, far from that. August and July were globally pretty hot and September seems to be setting a new record
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/amsutemps.html
check Channel 5
Very cool site. I check a number of the gaphs, not only comparing Sept 2008 to Sept 2009, but all the years from 1998 to this year. Even though it looks like Sept will be hotter than last year, it’s still very middle of the road compared to the bulk of Septembers past.
——————————————————————–
Scott, please keep posting here. Even though we are maybe on opposite sides on this issue, I have noted you are always very civil in your comments. We need more of that.
We are all concerned with the well being of the human race. We just happen to view the perceived threat of global warming and solutions to the perceived problem as disingenuous, politically motivated, and in the end, more detrimental to humanity than if we did nothing and let it happen, if it’s really happening at all. Most here believe that recourses would be better served on projects that fix levees here in California or provide potable water to Africa (I applaud Sting and the Police for donating to that cause instead of global warming).
In a philosophical sense, AWG walks hand in hand with the notion that we live on a fragile planet that is destine to be destroyed by us. It’s the “delicate balance” vs the “rough and tumble” philosophy of the nature of life on the planet. I favor the rough and tumble POV in lieu of the Gaia orthodoxy, a remnant of the 60’s hippie movement. As I always say, the only thing worse than a hippie, is a hippie with a college degree!!! (just kidding)
Have to go work now.
Mike
Smokey (09:03:01) :
Thanks Smokey,
You have done a better job than me.
Phil’s Dad (08:59:07) :
the butterfly effect (see how I did that) means that all of us effect the climate every time we step on a blade of grass, eat a morsel or take a breath. Everyone in this country and on every nation on earth. Including those who are not talking to us at the moment. That – times about 7billion – is what we need to “control” to moderate anthropological effects. While we are waiting for that to happen – prepare for the worst (either way) and live with it.
I won’t be accepting ‘control’ from politicians anytime soon, especially when I see they don’t ‘control’ themselves. Human beings, whatever their numbers, are a natural part of the Earth scene, and attempting to ‘control’ their taking breaths or their steppings on blades of grass on the back of a dud theory is asking for an ass kicking.
johng (07:41:32) says “The politicians haven’t got the balls for it! The green votes/taxes are too much!”
I accept the cowardly label – I use a pseudonym here because even being seen to consider “skeptical” views can affect my job as a European politician with an environment brief. I hope I will not lose too much respect from you for that – I am trying to spread common sense from inside the bunker.
Nevertheless if it is “green votes” that we are chasing than educating the masses is still the solution, which is why this site is so valuable. The green vote comes from green voters, not politicians.
That’s why I think the BBC statement highlighted by Gene Nemetz (08:04:59) so odd.
“The survey, by Cardiff University, shows there is still some way to go before the public’s perception matches that of their elected leaders.”
Political fact of life 1) Leaders are elected to represent / serve the public. Their “perception” can therefore only lag that of the public. Hopefully, not by too much.
I have to agree with Fred Lightfoot above, in a career spanning 36 years on the Emergency Services in South Africa and in the UK, I have witnessed “1,000 year floods” at 5 year intervals in one location, 100 year storms at three and four year intervals in another. Weather doesn’conform to “modelling” and any “model” is as good as the data fed into it. As a “Fire Engineer” my experience with models is that they are, at best, indicators, and at worst outright garbage. Very few are available (without the use of a super computer) capable of running the extremely complex interactions necessary to get an accurate result for a complex building, so they model one room at a time and extrapolate the results to give a snapshot. Change one parameter, or mistype one small piece of data and the model is slewed dramatically. If that result is then used to feed into other models …..
And as for “smoothed” data – it gives a “smoothed” result which may or may not be a reflection of reality. The AGW and IPCC campaign is about getting hands into research wallets – and far to many politicians haven’t the courage to admit they have been “blinded by science” and by the propaganda campaigns run by Fiends of the Earth and Greenstrife on behalf of their friends who feed them with the image they want to present.
It is refreshing to see this sort of article is available – even in a bad translation!
Fred Lightfoot (02:44:03), thanks for your comment. I come to this site, in part, for down-to-earth stories like yours. The last paragraph seems like a good candidate for Quote of the Week.
Ron :
“If you’re real objective is to warn people who you believe are misled and need your protection, you are wasting your time on this blog.”
So true. Most people I imagine are fed up with such misuse of the science and pointing to propaganda websites as “evidence”. People are fed up with hand waving statements such as “I see the evidence in AGW” without bothering to even say what this might be. Ignorance is excusable, but pompous ignorance is just annoying.
My only issue is the claim that “no climate model has predicted global cooling.”
This may be true of the climate models put together by “experts” or the ones that get press, but a simple bloke such as myself has offered a best-fit adjusted sine wave (and double sine-wave) against the HadCrut data and showed that this basic model projects that we have recently hit the warming peak and are now going to cool for the next 20 years or so.
Does it take a gazillion different mechanisms and crunch them on supercomputer? No. It’s a recursive analysis that uses less than a half-dozen parameters and takes a mere few minutes to crunch away on an excel spreadsheet.
And if i had to bet on my results versus the models showing runaway warming, I’d bet on the sine-wave fit.
But these kinds of analyses are just too simple for academia to take them seriously.
In my career as an actuary, I’ve never been burned yet by trying to simplify the complex in making my projections. I have, however, been burned trying to add complexity in an attempt to improve accuraccy.