By Andy May
The Climate Feedback website critiques my CO2Coalition article “Attributing global warming to humans.” Their factcheck is here. Like most “fact checks” these days it is a thinly disguised opinion piece. The statement that they claim is incorrect is:
“There is no evidence, other than models, that human CO2 emissions drive climate change and abundant evidence that the Sun, coupled with natural climate cycles, drives most, if not all, of recent climate changes, as described in Connolly, et al., 2021.” [emphasis added]
They cleverly leave out the last phrase: “as described in Connolly, et al., 2021,” and then immediately assert “Solar irradiance has had a negligible impact on Earth’s climate since the industrial era.” This is followed by no evidence other than an appeal to the mythical “consensus.”
Later in the article, they say Connolly, et al. uses simple linear regression to establish a link between solar irradiance and surface temperature. Connolly, et al. does not state that the Sun controls the climate or that humans do, it simply shows that, using available evidence, solar variability (actually TSI, or Total Solar Irradiance variability) could account for anywhere from 0 to 100% of the warming since the Little Ice Age (the so-called “pre-industrial” era). One of the main points of Connolly, et al. is that the IPCC and the so-called “consensus” are ignoring two critical areas of current research. First, they ignore the uncertainty in our estimate of surface warming since the Little Ice Age, and second, they ignore the considerable uncertainty in solar-variability-long-term trends, both recently and since the Little Ice Age. As they state in the paper, the amount of 20th century warming that can be simulated as due to solar variability, depends upon the surface temperature dataset and the solar TSI model used. There are many versions of both. Suffice it to say, while the exact influence of human activities and solar variability on climate change are both unknown, no one can claim solar influence is negligible. The correct answer is we don’t know.
In the Climate Feedback fact check, their Figure 1 shows the TSI reconstruction preferred by the IPCC, the empirical PMOD reconstruction. The PMOD reconstruction was created by Judith Lean and the late Claus Fröhlich by adjusting the data to match their solar model, it was not from the best satellite data, like the more accurate ACRIM model, which shows a long-term change in solar irradiance that may explain some of the 20th century surface warming.
Read the rest at the CO2Coalition website here.
Heavy flak is how you know you are over the target.
And, Lying by omission (failing to finish your quoted sentance by omitting the cited Connolley paper) seems to a ‘near consensus’ consensus trick:
And so on and so on.
Thermodynamics in the area of specific heat clearly shows that CO2 interaction with IR has no warming effect in dry air. If it did an extra column would required. One for with IR and one without.
Claims like theirs are one reason why Mann et al were so intent on doing away with the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. If the only thing affecting climate is CO2, there is no plausible way for a CO2 level model to account for history. Solar models would work, so of course they must be ignored.
The other idea Mikey Mann went for was rate of change. The abrupt uptick in temperature, the hokey schicty thingy, suggests an anomaly, whereas it was only “Mikes Nature Trick”, generated by splicing two different types of data together.
No abrupt temperature uptick here. If you are waiting for global warming, sorry to disappoint . . . (thx to WUWT contributors)
Good report. To further support solar climate influence, Javier published an excellent series of articles about climate change and solar forcing on Judith Curry’s site. His discussions about the solar-induced Bray and Eddy cycles were fascinating, because when you plot them on a timeline, they both reveal warming for many years to come — all while the Milankovitch cycles have started their cooling phase.
Fact Checking = Propaganda Opportunity.
Fact Checkers = The Thought Police
Fact checkers = fact chuckers
Now called opinion checkers according to twit.
I’ll go along with that.
Unless the narrative has changed recently in response to conflicting observational evidence or the observations have been adjusted to fit the narrative, polar temperature amplification has been considered irrefutable evidence of warming due to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations usually based on post-satellite (1979) observations.
It is puzzling that longer-term observations show both N and S poles are not responding as expected.
Richard Lindzen pointed out maybe 30 years ago that air temperature could vary without any change in solar irradiance. His comment has been ignored ever since.
Solar irradiance may be causal, but the whole consensus two-valued controversy — as though the argument is restricted to solar irradiance or CO2 — is a fake dichotomy.
Recent climate warming could be entirely from internal variation.
As you note, Andy, the correct answer is we don’t know.
Somehow, ‘we don’t know‘ has become the hardest of utterances for consensus climatologists. Instead they offer specious pseudo-knowledge. And they’re so committed to it that they have lost the capacity for honesty.
Case in point: SciAm’s smear of Steve Koonin last year. Usual suspects Naomi Oreskes, Michael Mann and Andrew Dessler were prominent. Their acquaintance with intellectual honesty is as a crocodile’s acquaintance with mercy.
Excellent point, Dr. Pat.
Thanks, Thomas. ‘Pat’ is fine. 🙂
Good to hear that “Pat” is fine. I was getting worried.
“I don’t know” can’t be used to justify spending money. It is therefore anathematic to politicians and their beholden bureaucrats.
Admission that one doesn’t know is usually a sign of honesty and integrity.
…now imagine the plethora of grant-mining researchers around Baal Gates when he asks: “Have you got my perfect vaccine ready yet?”
“Recent climate warming could be entirely from internal variation”
Could be, there go about a million jobs!
Crocodiles are in fact merciful. They drag their prey underwater, ensuring a quick death by drowning. The prey is not alive to suffer when they tear it apart to eat it bit by bit.
IMHO, the great failing of most statements that discuss “variations in solar irradiance” (as does CO2 Coalition, as mentioned in the above article) is lack of clarity of this term being applied to either top-of-atmosphere or to Earth’s surface.
It should be obvious that the difference between the two is most greatly affected by variabilities in Earth’s albedo when averaged over timescales of hundreds of years (relevant to events such as the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warming Period, etc.) to timescales of hundreds of thousands of years (relevant to events such as glacial/interglacial cycles).
Furthermore, it is scientifically well-known that clouds are the predominant driver of Earth’s variations in albedo, followed by variations in areal coverage by surface ice/snow.
Thus TOA irradiance (aka TOA insolation) variability is much less than Earth-surface irradiance variability, which is governed by long-term variations in Earth’s albedo.
Also, TSI is not the only solar variable, as “climate seancetists” would like people to think
Other facets of the Sun vary by much larger amounts.
I wish I could find a T shirt:
I love CO2
carbon dioxide + water (rain) + sunlight (sun)
plant photosynthesis (green plant)
to glucose + oxygen
Let them fact check that one!
Youtuber Mark Dice has a t-shirt which reads, “I love Global Warming”.
There are many websites that will provide whatever you want. Search for “design your own t-shirt”..
Go ask your gramps about stencils and fabric paint…
Climate’s a “multivariate coupled non-linear chaotic system” with many
unknowns, with one of the most important & largest being our lack of
understanding of clouds. What’s needed is 100X-300X greater resolution
of grid cells from satellite imagery to solve some of these unknowns so
their effects can be eliminated, making it possible to solve the effects
of other unknowns like CO2, solar variability, cosmic radiation, CAGW,
biological inputs, etc. Since there aren’t any programs to do this,
most disagreements will go unresolved until then.
A possible technical glitch is that there may not be enough computing
power to run the models with the greater resolution. In spite of this, it
would be better to start collecting data now as that data will be needed
eventually if/when that problem is overcome.
Old Man Winter
It is good to give a clear definition but it is even more complex when we realize that we do not have “climate” but some 30 climate zones and sub-zones that each impact on the adjacent areas. I would venture to suggest our scientific understanding of how these work and interact is in its infancy.
Would the same concept apply to large clouds/storms, as there are many different
volumes within each that act differently & interact with the neighboring volumes?
Old man, I was once privileged to be present on a sunrise mountain top, watching in amazement as a cloud formed around the rocks, trees, shrubs, leaves, my own legs!
On closer inspection, I realised the droplets are condensing in the centimeter, no, millimeter-sized eddy currents, where the adiabatic temperature grading allows warmer air layers to touch lower temperature air surfaces, causing condensation. In minuscule thin layers wisping away into conglomerate cloud.
This happened in front of my eyes, I experimented with forming shapes in the receding cloud, I had a whale of a time.
No matter how many psychedelics were involved in that experience, I can tell you this: Modelling the atmosphere in chunks even a few meters across, is intellectual masturbation. The average motor mechanic has more respect for the way things change under pressure, than has all the 100km-cube climastrologists together.
The Connolly, et al., 2021 paper is deeply flawed and should not be relied upon for anything [as we have discussed at length before]. They set up a false dilemma between two choices: secular increase or no secular increase of solar activity the last 300 years. The main ‘evidence’ for the existence of the dilemma is the Hoyt and Schatten group sunspot number, GSN. Ken Schatten have realized that they made a mistake in assessing the scale factor between Wolf and Wolfer (they had is as 1.02 or so, while it actually was about 1.65 because Wolfer used a more powerful telescope. So the secular increase in the H&S GSN [and all TSI reconstructions derived therefrom] is simply due to that mistake and did not exist, so the whole discussion is moot.
But the Climate Feedback fact checkers ignored the Connolly et al 2021 reference in their fact check completely. Crickets.
So as you have now shown, their fact checking of this issue is also moot.
Funny how the Solar history got flattened, isn’t it. 😉
Almost as if it was a historic temperature series, but in reverse.
I’m so sick of lefty so-called ‘fact-checkers.’ They suffer from the same affliction as do the climate scaredy babies. The modelers pretend, falsely, that their model runs constitute actual climate data, as their media toady fact-checkers join in the feast of tendentious hallucinogenic mushrooms, defining their opinions as fact, and then proceeding from that corrupt arrangement, to call people with far more integrity than they, liars. I now longer care about polls, and I no longer care about fact checks. Give it up, dumb-ass fact checkers. Don’t make me call you double dumb asses.
I like to watch the little Wunderground ‘personal weather stations’ – especially ones that I’m familiar with and ones that I can personally go and check, should anything unusual be reported.
Hence my current 2 faves are a one about 4 miles from me here in Notts and the one I was 3 miles away from in Cumbria
As crows fly, they are about 140 miles apart
The weather her in the UK has been cyclonic for this last week = high pressure and settled. Not completely blue skies but bright and warm – in places.
These last 3 or 4 nights and as per now (04:30 British Summer Time), ‘things’ are interesting re the 2 stations.
Over the 270 minutes from midnight to now, temperature at the Cumbrian station has dropped by 1.3 Celsius while the Notts station has lost 4.0 Celsius in the same time period..
Yesterday’s daytime in Cumbria (90 metres AMSL) peaked at 17.4 and minimum was 9.4
Yesterday’s daytime in Notts (30 metres AMSL) peaked at 21.4 and minimum was 7.1
Those places are 140 miles apart, on the same land-mass, under the same sun and have the same CO2 in the sky and are both as ‘rural’ as you can get in England these days.
So what’s going on…..
I know exactly what’s going on = I know the geography, landscapes and especially land-uses intimately and it’s more obvious than the nose on anybody’s face why those 2 weather stations follow such different temperature trajectories.
Why does ‘Climate Science’ not see it?
What about their daily ‘energy trajectories‘?
After all, the Green House Effect is all premised on Trapped Heat (i.e. trapped energy) and not upon Trapped Temperature
Was something wrong with recording ‘energy’ (within a given standardised volume) at the Official Weather/Climate Stations
Why not take Warmists to task on that, less than trivial, point.
Don’t they all shoot their own feet when they rage about Trapped Heat but then only use temperature to gauge that heat?
= exactly why those 2 weather stations I mention are so different temperature-wise yet so close together geographically and you’d thus presume, climate-wise
When all is said and done (someone please inform Monkton), temperature is not a ‘Real Thing‘
Energy is.
Energy has dimensions, energy is real, palpable and can be expressed in terms of other real things such as metres, kilograms and seconds.
Temperature can not be similarly described – temperature is not ‘real’ or have dimensions
Temperature is arbitrary and a thing of fantasy – it is whatever anyone wants it to be, when they want it to be ##
Doesn’t that just perfectly sum up all of Climate Science?
## While we’re about it = not all that dissimilar to sun-spots and Natural Variation don’t think/admit?
Dancing Angels anyone, how they keeping these days?
The Connolly, et al., 2021 paper is deeply flawed and should not be relied upon for anything [as we have discussed at length before]. They set up a false dilemma between two choices: secular increase or no secular increase of solar activity the last 300 years. The main ‘evidence’ for the existence of the dilemma is the Hoyt and Schatten group sunspot number, GSN. Ken Schatten have realized that they made a mistake in assessing the scale factor between Wolf and Wolfer (they had it as 1.02 or so, while it actually was about 1.65 because Wolfer used a more powerful telescope). So the secular increase in the H&S GSN [and all TSI reconstructions derived therefrom] is simply due to that mistake and did not exist, so the whole discussion is moot.
Sorry.
April’s winter of the century in the northern US.
Snowstorm in the states of Oregon and Washington.
Snow drifts of several meters in North Dakota (there will be more snow). Frost in the Great Lakes region.
A sharp drop in temperatures in the northeastern US.
UV radiation still very low (weak solar flares) and still very high galactic radiation (weak solar wind magnetic field).
La Niña is not going away.
Why is it necessary to count changes in UV radiation as a percentage and not as watts? Because ozone is formed after a direct collision between a photon and an O2 molecule, in the presence of another molecule.
Thanks, very good graphs. Even though correlation is not causation, the solar indices and Northern Hemisphere weather do compare very well. The Southern Hemisphere seems to march to its own drummer, which makes the whole ‘global’ average idea a bit strange.
And the majority of Paleoclimate ice core temperature proxies over the past millions of years are from the Antarctic.
“There is no evidence, other than models, that human CO2 emissions drive climate change and abundant evidence that the Sun, coupled with natural climate cycles, drives most, if not all, of recent climate changes, as described in Connolly, et al., 2021.” [emphasis added]
<- This (above) is a true statement of fact.
GHGE begins with the claim that earth’s surface is, on average, 60C warmer than it would otherwise be with no GHG (mainly CO2 and H2O) in its atmosphere.
BTW: The GHGE claim was originally 33C. Today they claim 60C warmer.
This claim of a GHGE warming earth’s surface by 60C (33C, or whatever) is just made up. No science supports it. It is easily falsified by facts.
GHGE was invented to explain why earth’s surface is warmer than observation and calculations show it should be (warmer than the moon for example). Two explanations were developed in the 19th century.
1) It’s the GHG (mainly CO2 and H2O)
2) It’s adiabatic compression. See later editions of James Clerk Maxwell’s book “Theory of Heat“
““There is no evidence, other than models, that human CO2 emissions drive climate change”
Interesting that they didn’t try to argue about this first part of the comment 😉
Seems they know that is factual.
The other part where they try to praise their CHIMP5 models is laughable , to say the least.
Any real model that was a far from reality as they are, would have been turfed to the circular filing system many years ago.
The climate models are nothing more than glorified computer games.
Climate Feedback FAILS yet again !!
“The climate models are nothing more than glorified computer games.”
The climate models are nothing more than well-remunerated glorified computer games.
Better?
Auto
Graphs of the solar magnetic field clearly show a trend. Especially the equatorial dipole of the Sun shows a decreasing trend. This is very important because sunspots in the solar equatorial region have the strongest impact on the Earth’s magnetosphere.
Low solar magnetic field activity leads to climatic changes in many regions of the world, related to the strength of the geomagnetic field, which will protect some regions more strongly and others more weakly from galactic radiation at high latitudes. This will be particularly pronounced during the winter season, when the circulation in the troposphere is influenced by the stratospheric polar vortex.
A decrease in ozone production will also contribute to changes in the pattern of the stratospheric polar vortex.
The 30-day SOI is now at its highest since early year. La Niña is strengthening and will affect summer weather in the Northern Hemisphere.