From the The Washington Times – By Willie Soon and William M. Briggs
Scientists have been studying solar influences on the climate for more than 5,000 years.
Chinese imperial astronomers kept detailed sunspot records. They noticed that more sunspots meant warmer weather. In 1801, the celebrated astronomer William Herschel (discoverer of the planet Uranus) observed that when there were fewer spots, the price of wheat soared. He surmised that less light and heat from the sun resulted in reduced harvests.
Earlier last month, professor Richard Muller of the University of California-Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project announced that in the project’s newly constructed global land temperature record, “no component that matches solar activity” was related to temperature. Instead, Mr. Muller said carbon dioxide controlled temperature.
Could it really be true that solar radiation — which supplies Earth with the energy that drives our climate and which, when it has varied, has caused the climate to shift over the ages — is no longer the principal influence on climate change?
Consider the accompanying chart. It shows some rather surprising relationships between solar radiation and daytime high temperatures taken directly from Berkeley’s BEST project. The remarkable nature of these series is that these tight relationships can be shown to hold from areas as large as the United States.
This new sun-climate relationship picture may be telling us that the way our sun cools and warms the Earth is largely through the penetration of incoming solar radiation in regions with cloudless skies. Recent work by National Center for Atmospheric Research senior scientists Harry van Loon and Gerald Meehl place strong emphasis on this physical point and argue that the use of daytime high temperatures is the most appropriate test of the solar-radiation-surface-temperature connection hypothesis. All previous sun-climate studies have included the complicated nighttime temperature records while the sun is not shining.
Read more: SOON AND BRIGGS: Global-warming fanatics take note – Washington Times
Matt G says:
September 9, 2012 at 8:21 am
I disagree about is the thinking that this very short change can’t have a longer period affect before the cycle ramps up again.
I don’t know what you mean by ‘the cycle ramping up’. There are longer period effects [but tiny]. If the cycle was at Maunder Minimum value for 5000 years and then ‘ramped up’ [?] to today’s value and stayed there for the next 5000 years, there will certainly be an increase of temperature of 0.07 C
this small change just over a year or two
It is not about one or two years. You asked about 50+ years and I explained what would happen, even extended that to 5000 years for good measure. What the Schrijver paper was about, was that the level of TSI [and solar activity in general] during 2008-2009 was the same as that during the Maunder Minimum.
HenryP says:
September 9, 2012 at 8:46 am
I notice that he has not reacted to me thinking that he is not honest in the interpretation of all results.
There are things beneath contempt.
Henry@Leif
I am still looking for the distribution of the solar constant, the cumulative % energy for each wavelength,
ur last quote (after several mishaps) was
http://www.leif.org/research/Integrated-Flux.pdf
That is also not it. I am also looking for a date of the table.
(the last table I have is that technical paper from NASA from 40 odd years ago)
I would very much appreciate if you could help me with that?
HenryP says:
September 9, 2012 at 9:31 am
I am still looking for the distribution of the solar constant, the cumulative % energy for each wavelength, ur last quote (after several mishaps) was http://www.leif.org/research/Integrated-Flux.pdf
That is also not it. I am also looking for a date of the table.
The third column [as I have already explained] is the cumulative energy in W/m2 from zero wave length up the wave length in the first column. If you want %, divide the Wattage by 1367 then multiply by 100. The date doesn’t matter much as this distribution has been well-determined for decades, but it is 1986. There is more of the table for the infrared, but since you are interested in short wavelengths I didn’t scan in the infrared [I could if you need it]. As you can see the % for less than 0.3 um is about 1%.
Oh good another solar article and one that uses an old TSI graph. Predictably, Leif is going to point out the error, and then everyone attacks Leif. I suggest reading Leif’s papers and website articles and you will see he is doing good science. He has good data to show that TSI may not vary much. If you consider the Holocene has been a 10,000 year period of remarkably stable climate compared to what preceded it, this makes sense. Perhaps the sun has long periods of stability.
We only have 30 or so years of satellite data, so based on data we have this looks to be the case. If we can get Be10 to give us more data regarding TSI we may be able to push far back in time, but for now we have to go with what we have. The geologist in me says episodes like the Little Dryas and other extreme and fast onset climate changes happened too fast for ocean currents or other suspected causes to operate. In other words, although the present data show little TSI variation, perhaps the sun has a more variable ice age phase that lasts 100 ky before it changes to the present stable low variance mode of operating, or there are amplifications we do not not know about in an unknown non linear process right hear on earth. Only time will tell, but it sure is interesting.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 8, 2012 at 7:23 pm
Smokey says:
September 8, 2012 at 6:40 pm
Another excellent post from george e smith. Here is an extended chart of TSI, which clearly shows the LIA and subsequent recovery.
No, that is not what we think TSI has been doing. The curve should look more like the red one in
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-LEIF.png
———————————————————-
Leif something is wrong, TSI are being shown to be 3-5 W less:
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/total_solar_irradiance_plots/images/tim_level3_tsi_24hour_640x480.png
will the charts be corrected down with this value?
Also I understand UV varies much more. Are there any proxy showing UV variances?
Henry Clark says:
September 9, 2012 at 12:30 am
Henry – re your conversation with Smokey – I found this paper by Mahoney et al 2008 about the russian sea ice extend 1933-2006 – possible could help to give an overview:
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/publications/mahoney/Mahoney_2008_JGR_20thC_RSI.pdf
Poptech says:
Last I checked scientific positions had educational and experience requirements.
Surely, even an uncredentialed person such as yourself understands the difference between scientific reasoning and personnel management. Hiring decisions are not epistimilogic. Science is. Hiring decisions are not made with a methodology that holds to logical consistency. Science must. With respect to the hiring of scientists, that disconnect is responsible for much of the bad science that we have to wade thru.
You of course can argue with them that credentials don’t matter and try to get hired.
Been there, done that successfully. Perhaps more relevantly, my position reqires that I hire other scientists for my projects. Frequently, they will disagree on some point or another. Sorting out who is correct does not involve counting the number of certificates on the wall behind the desk. To the contrary, the most credentialed of the scientists that work for me is the one most often found to be incorrect. This is demonstrated when junior scientists with fewer credentials – often in unrelated fields – point out and correct his errors. Relying on ad hominem to make scientific decisions is always incorrect, and that is but one example of how the problem manifests.
I don’t consider statistical arguments from people who lack the very basic credentials to make these arguments, least of all over someone who is actually qualified to make these arguments (Briggs).
Then you demonstrate that you are unqualified to undertake such considerations, and are hoist by your own fallacious petard.
In addition to being wrong in the base formation of your argument, you are also being willfully biased in how you apply your fallacious reasoning. Mosher is not BEST’s statistician. David Brillinger is. Whatever statistical duties BEST may assign to Mosher, his work is vetted by Brillinger (and by Brillinger’s PhD assistant on the project), and it is Brillinger who is ultimately the statistician of record for whatever is published, should they ever manage to actually publish anything. Brillinger’s credentials make Briggs look like an ambitious third grader.
Also in the gross inconsistency department is the silliness with which you opened this discussion:
I wouldn’t have used BEST data at all as it involved the contributions of those unqualified to contribute aka Mosher and Muller.
You challenge Briggs’ decision to use BEST, based on a concern about its statistics. Briggs has a PhD in statistics. You are an anonymous poster on a blog. A rabbit couldn’t follow that.
The “You’re not a climate scientist” argument is completely different because those in the field have such varied educational (all scientific however) and experience backgrounds.
No, it is exactly the same. Ad hominem and ad vericundium are fallacies in formal logic, and the status of such arguments does not depend on the particulars.
Oh and you are talking to the wrong person if you think I am ever going to STFU.
Yes, ignorance is often persistent.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 9, 2012 at 8:56 am
Sorry, the cycle ramping up here means the increase in activity again after it has reached the minimum towards it’s next peak. The MM if it lasted for 5000 years would reach equilibrium well before then, but only 2 years I doubt very much? You don’t have instrumental data with one cycle for longer periods with a minimum of 2 years. The 0.07c value is only based on these 2 years over very recent cycles.
I know I mentioned 50 years+ and you explained even for 5000 years, but this small change over a year or two refers to the minimum period of the cycle during 2008 and 2009. The rest of the cycle has higher activity of course. Therefore it is about 2 years around the minimum period, but extended to 5000 years in your example.
“Thank you for the explanation, the only thing I disagree about is the thinking that this very short change can’t have a longer period affect before the cycle ramps up again. Only reason why this small amount is currently detected is because the cycle ramps up before it gets any possible longer term affect going. Therefore I am not convinced if the cycle didn’t ramp back up this small change just over a year or two normally, won’t have a bigger affect over a much longer period. To believe that this short term affect occurs immediately doesn’t back up climate history.”
Hence, you think equilibrium of the planet Earth will occur from the sun’s minimum period of the cycle in just 2 years that it occurs. I don’t see any evidence to suggest this would only occur and therefore I disagree.
Dear Dr.Svalgaard,
If not doing due diligence before penning an article is a sign of lack of integrity as per your interpretation for Briggs, would that apply to you in respect to the fact that you did not do due diligence and understand my post before hastily penning your first few replies?
Lars P. says:
September 9, 2012 at 9:59 am
Leif something is wrong, TSI are being shown to be 3-5 W less
Yes, the earlier measurements had a systematic error of that [small] size because some extra light leaked into the instruments.
will the charts be corrected down with this value?
The early data will eventually be adjusted down, but the variation from cycle to cycle is not affected by the systematic error, so it really doesn’t matter much if we adjust the new data up to the old, or the old down to the new.
Also I understand UV varies much more. Are there any proxy showing UV variances?
Since the UV is such a small part of the total energy, its larger [percentage] variation doesn’t matter much, just like the large variation of the amount of loose change in Bill Gates’ pockets does not impact his total wealth much. UV creates and maintains the ionosphere and the electric currents flowing up there thus measures the UV flux. We can measure the electric currents by their magnetic effect at the ground, and so know what the UV flux was doing. See e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/Geomagnetic%20Calibration%20of%20Sunspot%20Numbers.pdf
Matt G says:
September 9, 2012 at 10:26 am
Sorry, the cycle ramping up here means the increase in activity again after it has reached the minimum towards it’s next peak. The MM if it lasted for 5000 years would reach equilibrium well before then, but only 2 years I doubt very much? You don’t have instrumental data with one cycle for longer periods with a minimum of 2 years. The 0.07c value is only based on these 2 years over very recent cycles.
No, that is not what I said. The issue is: what was solar activity durig the Maunder Minimum? Schrijver et al. suggest it was on the level of what we have seen in 2008-2009. If so, the difference in the total solar energy we would observe during a ‘Maunder Minimum’ of any duration [50+ years, 500 years, 5000 etc] would be 0.05% of the average over the past 40 years. Such a deficit would lower the temperature 0.04C.
Venter says:
September 9, 2012 at 10:56 am
If not doing due diligence before penning an article is a sign of lack of integrity as per your interpretation for Briggs, would that apply to you in respect to the fact that you did not do due diligence and understand my post before hastily penning your first few replies?
It certainly would, if I were commenting on your views, which I was not. I was simply stating that [at least in my book] it is a deficit of integrity in general when a co-author [such as Briggs] puts his name on a paper using faulty data. Briggs might be excused on account of ignorance [but his sin remains]. Soon on the other hand should know better and his sin is much worse.
Henry@Leif
Ok! Thanks. I got it now. I have to calculate % here. I do need the whole thing because I want to compare all wavelengths with the earliest table.
However, now you say:
The date doesn’t matter much as this distribution has been well-determined for decades,
Henry says
There is the thing that I wanted to check. How do you know that that distribution of energy of the solar constant is “well – determined” (i.e. unchanged) if it was only measured once, more than 4 decades ago?
Venter says:
I do agree with the fundamental statement that it does not matter who you are, it’s your work that matters and should stand up to scrutiny.
Then don’t support acts to the contrary.
Willis Eschenbach is one who always states that he pounds nails for a living and also has interest in climate and does work on climate issues on the side.
Willis is a fine example. He is often gratuitously wrong about things that a person with a basic formal education in the field he is expounding upon would likely get right. For the same reason, he may see truths that such a person has been educated to look past. If he is wrong about something, one must demonstrate what that is. One does not do that by talking about who he is. Regardles of who he is, he may be right.
He does not come out with holier than thou attitude like Mosher as if he’s the smartest and the rest are idiots.
Please. The ruler does not exist that could decide the outcome of a “who
hascan be the biggest dick” contest between those two. They are both condescending BS artists when they choose to be. It detracts from the utility of the correct points that they both raise, but it doesn’t make them wrong about anything in particular, let alone about everything they touch.Mosher as none of those and yet the way he goes around nowadays with his BS one would think that he was some all round expert in every area imaginable. And he has been going around at JC’s blog, discussing with pathetic trolls like Robert, Lolwot and others of that ilk, moaning about WUWT and stating that one can’t hold a discussion a WUWT.
Absolutely.
Does Mosher do any of that? No, he does only high handed cryptic ” know better than you, I’m smarter than you, go figure ” kind of drive by drivel.
Without question.
So in his case, I believe that Poptech’s comments are well justified
Nope. Poptech intended to attack Mosher. He did so by employing illegitimate methods. Then he defended those methods in the general case. Repeatedly. That is exactly how science fails.
The important thing about BEST and Mosher is not their results vs the credentials he doesn’t have. It is the credential he does have, that they hired him for, and that they put at the top of the list of his credentials presented in their promotional materials:
Steven Mosher is co-author of “Climategate: The Crutape Letters” and works as an independent consultant in the San Francisco area.
Steven Mosher’s primary role at BEST is as “sceptic” window dressing. That is something that, unlike his abilities at statistical analysis, can’t be got better at half the price from the Berkely grad slave pool. They attempted to coopt Anthony’s reputation with similar flatteries, and more or less succeeded for a while. Ditto Judy ‘Judith Goat’ Curry. Thankfully, Anthony saw the writing on the wall.
Leif says
Since the UV is such a small part of the total energy, its larger [percentage] variation doesn’t matter much
Henry says
This is where you err. You cannot make such a statement unless you know all the interactions that happen in the upper atmosphere.
HenryP says:
September 9, 2012 at 11:46 am
How do you know that that distribution of energy of the solar constant is “well – determined” (i.e. unchanged) if it was only measured once, more than 4 decades ago?
Because it is well-determined and 1986 is not ‘more than 4 decades ago’.
I’ll scan the rest later today.
This is where you err. You cannot make such a statement unless you know all the interactions that happen in the upper atmosphere.
Similarly, you cannot make the opposite statement [that I err] unless you know all the interactions that happen in the upper atmosphere. Do you?
And the one statement one can make is that UV cannot take a bigger bite out of the energy than there is [which is not much].
Steven Mosher says:
September 6, 2012 at 11:08 pm
1. they used out of date solar data.
2. the US is 2% of the globe.
3. If they used the BEST data I think they used, they probably forgot a critical step.
In any case, as always, folks should practice good skepticism and have a look at their code before having kittens.
I’ll pass on that advice to the next pregnant cat I meet.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 9, 2012 at 11:03 am
Lars P. says:
September 9, 2012 at 9:59 am
Leif something is wrong, TSI are being shown to be 3-5 W less
Yes, the earlier measurements had a systematic error of that [small] size because some extra light leaked into the instruments.
will the charts be corrected down with this value?
The early data will eventually be adjusted down, but the variation from cycle to cycle is not affected by the systematic error, so it really doesn’t matter much if we adjust the new data up to the old, or the old down to the new.
Also I understand UV varies much more. Are there any proxy showing UV variances?
Since the UV is such a small part of the total energy, its larger [percentage] variation doesn’t matter much, just like the large variation of the amount of loose change in Bill Gates’ pockets does not impact his total wealth much.
————————————–
Leif I am no specialist in the area but I fear you over simplify.
The suns radiation is not just simply a 1361 W/m2 radiation – and any such radiation would do the same.
When checking what lack of sunlight can cause to human beings it becomes more clear that one cannot replace sunlight with “any light”.
In the UV case, lack of UV cause lack of Vitamin D – as we humans have some primitive receptors which do photosynthesis of UV lights.
Btw. is UV not responsible for instance for ozone generation? And fluctuation in UV would not influence the rate of ozone generation? Just asking.
Leif says
1) Similarly, you cannot make the opposite statement [that I err] unless you know all the interactions that happen in the upper atmosphere. Do you?
2) And the one statement one can make is that UV cannot take a bigger bite out of the energy than there is [which is not much].
Henry says
1) No, but I carry on with my puzzle to find out….there are several pieces making a picture…
2) actually it can; my results suggest that that is exactly what is happening. Some small solar fvariation in the UV causes interaction in the top of the atmosphere which in turn causes more back radiation in the 0-400 nm range (< 400 nm = 9%)
However, seeing that you don't want to accept my results, I fear we are going around in circles, or is that cycles….
LarsP
Btw. is UV not responsible for instance for ozone generation? And fluctuation in UV would not influence the rate of ozone generation? Just asking
Henry@Larry Plume
You are so right. That’s what I have been telling Leif. Glad to find there are a few people on this blog who can see what is happening.
Lars P. says:
September 9, 2012 at 1:35 pm
The suns radiation is not just simply a 1361 W/m2 radiation – and any such radiation would do the same.
Outside of the atmosphere [and that was what S&B said they were plotting] the sun radiates pretty much as any blac-body 1361 W/m2 radiator would do.
In the UV case, lack of UV cause lack of Vitamin D – as we humans have some primitive receptors which do photosynthesis of UV lights.
Nevertheless UV is but a tiny fraction of the whole.
And fluctuation in UV would not influence the rate of ozone generation? Just asking.
The fluctuations in UV [and in ozone] are tiny, and ozone does not have much influence on the climate. There are even indications that the UV varies opposite to the solar cycle.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 9, 2012 at 11:03 am
“Since the UV is such a small part of the total energy, its larger [percentage] variation doesn’t matter much…”
I don’t follow that. Firstly, the deviation from “normal” inputs is what drives things away from “normal” conditions. Secondly, each UV photon carries orders of magnitude more energy than an IR photon, or even a visible light photon. They can initiate processes and reactions the others cannot.
Geoff Sharp says:
September 9, 2012 at 7:35 am
John Finn says:
September 9, 2012 at 6:01 am
Geoff, I wrote
You responded with
Geoff, thank you for illustrating my point so perfectly.
Mr. Muller may not have seen this documentary or read the peer reviewed work done by Henrik Svensmark and published in the Royal Society.
The Cloud Mystery
53 minute video
Poor JJ, Mosher still has worthless science and statistical credentials and I am going to make sure everyone knows about it. Your persistence on this means this information is clearly not widely known, I will make sure to change that. Thank you for the inspiration. What exactly are my credentials? I have never published them online for privacy reasons but I can assure you I have never pretended to be a climate scientist or a statistician only what I actually am a computer analyst.
Why would you hire other scientists when you can hire those who have scientifically worthless credentials like Mosher? FYI, junior scientists have better scientific credentials than Mosher.
I find it interesting that the one thing Mosher was right about required knowledge of English (Gleick’s fake memo).
I find this statement to be based on pure idiocy and see nothing to support it.
Again thanks for the inspiration about Mosher. I will be sure to post it for you when I am done. We will then find out how much of an effect people actually knowing his scientifically and statistically worthless credentials has on how people take his “arguments”.