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• Wednesday, July 2, 2008 02:26 PM

  Manners please, publicola

  Hi publicola,

  In response to your last immature emotional outburst: “it helps demonstrate that you, manacker, are either illiterate or a liar. Or both.”

  For shame, publicola. Didn’t your Mommy tell you it was bad manners to call people names?

  You cherry picked two quotes, which are quite revealing nevertheless.

  30% of the warming since 1970 from total solar irradiance (Willson’s study says up to 50%, and some others go even higher).

  This is a whole different ball game than the IPCC estimated RF for TSI of 0.12 W / m^2 (about 10 times what IPCC estimates, with an admitted “low level of scientific understanding”).

  So you see, publicola, you have to read all of the studies. They do not claim that the sun is the ONLY influencing factor, just that TSI could have caused 30% to 50% of the observed warming.

  They also indicate that other solar factors (the Svensmark cosmic ray / cloud hypothesis as well as the impact of UV radiation on atmospheric ozone) could contribute additional solar forcing beyond the TSI effect.

  Whether the sun is 30%, 50% or 70% is not the point.

  The point is that we were in a period of unusually high solar activity in the latter half of the 20th century (highest level in 8,000 years), that this has had an impact on global temperatures, that there is still a lot we do not yet know about solar forcing of climate and that the IPCC estimates of the solar impact are likely to be low by a factor of at least 10.

  That is the “take home” from all this.

  The most recent slowdown in solar activity since the start of solar cycle 24 will give us some new insight. If, as Willson and many other solar experts suggest, we are starting a longer term cycle of significantly reduced solar activity, this will have a major impact on global temperatures. Are the recent unusually cold months a precursor of a new long-term cooling trend? Who knows? I don’t. You don’t. Willson doesn’t. And IPCC doesn’t.

  But the key conclusion here is that it is not as simple as the AGW proponents would have us believe. CO2 may play a role, but it may only be a secondary one.

  That’s all, publicola.

  Regards,

  Max

  —manacker Read manacker's other letters
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