Or both.

manacker: "Sun does not influence climate?'

manracker, are you really so obtuse as to believe that anyone here has suggested such a thing? Nice straw man though.

manacker: "Sorry publicola, you’re reading the wrong stuff. Forget the alarmist junk science sites like RealClimate and read the many original studies out there, if you really want to know what’s going on.

Here are some links to help you understand things better.

Hope this helps."

It certaintly does - it helps demonstrate that you, manacker, are either illiterate or a liar. Or both.

manacker: (continuing directly) "Solanki et al (2004)

http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/nature02995.pdf"

From that letter to Nature:

Although the rarity of the current episode of high average sunspot number may be taken as an indication that the Sun has contributed to the unusual degree of climate change during the twentieth century, we stress that solar variability is unlikely to be the prime cause of the strong warming during the last three decades3. In ref. 3, reconstructions of solar total and spectral irradiance as well as of cosmic ray flux were compared with surface temperature records covering approximately 150 years. It was shown that even under the extreme assumption that the Sun was responsible for all the global warming prior to 1970, at the most 30% of the strong warming since then can be of solar origin.

manacker: (continuing directly) "http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/solanki2004/solanki2004.html"

From that scientific abstract:

According to our reconstruction, the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago. We find that during the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode. Although the rarity of the current episode of high average sunspot numbers may indicate that the Sun has contributed to the unusual climate change during the twentieth century, we point out that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades.

I could go on, but as these two passages demonstrate:

You, manacker, are either illiterate or a liar. Or both.

The only anti-science involved is by the loony left trying to hype and spin a social change the only way they know how;by lying and using junk science.

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

Just calling a spade a spade, manacker.

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

30% of the warming since 1970 from total solar irradiance"

Nice deceptive editing. Here it is again:

we stress that solar variability is unlikely to be the prime cause of the strong warming during the last three decades... even under the extreme assumption that the Sun was responsible for all the global warming prior to 1970, at the most 30% of the strong warming since then can be of solar origin.

Got that, manacker? That 30% is an extreme, upper-bound assessment.

manacker: "Willson’s study says up to 50%"

Another lie.

I read "R.C. Willson (2003)":

http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/news/2003/story03-20-03.html

and it says no such thing.

The other article you attributed to "Willson" - "Willson (update – 2007)"

Is from a different, guy, whose name is actually "Wilson".

And that link:

http://gpolya.newsvine.com/_news/2007/07/11/831692-total-solar-irradiance-tsi-variation-possible-contribution-to-climate-change

says no such thing with respect to a 50% contribtution either.

You are either illiterate or a liar, manacker. Or both.

Clues to End of the Last Ice Age

09/27/07

USC College researcher shows that deep-sea temperatures rose 1,300 years before the buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide, ruling out CO2 as driver of the last ice age’s meltdown.

by Terah U. DeJong

Photo/Dietmar Quistorf

In contrast to what is often inferred from the geologic record, carbon dioxide did not cause the end of the last ice age, a new USC study published in Science suggests.

“There has been this continual reference to the correspondence between CO2 and climate change as reflected in ice core records as justification for the role of CO2 in climate change,” said paleoclimatologist Lowell Stott, the study’s lead author and a professor of earth sciences at USC College.

“You can no longer argue that CO2 alone caused the end of the ice ages.”

Deep-sea temperatures warmed about 1,300 years before the tropical surface ocean and well before the rise in atmospheric CO2, the study found. The finding suggests the rise in greenhouse gas was likely a result of warming – but not its main cause.

However, the study does not question the fact that CO2 plays a key role in climate.

“I don’t want anyone to leave thinking that this is evidence that CO2 doesn’t affect climate,” Stott cautioned. “It does, but the important point is that CO2 is not the beginning and end of climate change.”

While an increase in atmospheric CO2 and the end of the ice ages occurred at roughly the same time, scientists have debated whether CO2 caused the warming or was released later by an already warming sea.

The best estimate from other studies of when CO2 began to rise is no earlier than 18,000 years ago. Yet this study shows that the deep sea, which reflects a good picture of oceanic temperature trends, started warming about 19,000 years ago.

“What this means is that a lot of energy went into the ocean long before the rise in atmospheric CO2,” Stott said.

But where did this energy come from? Evidence pointed southward.

Water’s salinity and temperature are properties that can be used to trace its origin – and the warming deep water appeared to come from the Antarctic Ocean, the scientists wrote.

This water then was transported northward over 1,000 years via well-known deep-sea currents, a conclusion supported by carbon-dating evidence.

In addition, the researchers noted that the increases in deep-sea temperature coincided with the retreat of Antarctic sea ice, both occurring 19,000 years ago, before the northern hemisphere’s ice retreat began.

Finally, Stott and colleagues found a correlation between melting Antarctic sea ice and increased springtime solar radiation over Antarctica, suggesting this was the energy source.

As the sun pumped in heat, the warming accelerated because of sea-ice albedo feedbacks, in which retreating ice exposes more of the ocean that can absorb heat from the sun, much like a dark T-shirt on a hot day, and this results in more melting.

In addition, the authors’ model showed how changed ocean conditions may have been responsible for the release of CO2 from the ocean into the atmosphere, which like the albedo feedbacks, also accelerated the warming.

The link between the sun and ice age cycles is not new. The theory of Milankovitch cycles states that periodic changes in Earth’s orbit cause increased summertime solar radiation in the northern hemisphere, which controls ice size.

However, this study suggests that the pace-keeper of ice sheet growth and retreat lies in the southern hemisphere’s spring rather than the northern hemisphere’s summer.

The conclusions underscore the importance of regional climate dynamics, Stott said. “Here is an example of how a regional climate response translated into a global climate change,” he explained.

Stott and colleagues arrived at their results by studying a unique sediment core from the western Pacific composed of fossilized surface-dwelling (planktonic) and bottom-dwelling (benthic) organisms.

These organisms – foraminifera – incorporate different isotopes of oxygen from ocean water into their calcite shells, depending on the temperature, and by measuring the change in these isotopes in shells of different ages, it is possible to reconstruct how the deep and surface ocean temperatures changed through time.

If CO2 caused the warming, one would expect surface temperatures to increase before deep-sea temperatures, since the heat slowly would spread from top to bottom. Instead, carbon-dating showed that the water used by the bottom-dwelling organisms began warming about 1,300 years before the water used by surface-dwelling ones, suggesting that the warming spread bottom-up instead.

“The climate dynamic is much more complex than simply saying that CO2 rises and the temperature warms,” Stott said. The complexities “have to be understood in order to appreciate how the climate system has changed in the past and how it will change in the future.”

Stott’s collaborators were Axel Timmermann of the University of Hawaii and Robert Thunell of the University of South Carolina. Stott was supported by the National Science Foundation and Timmerman by the International Pacific Research Center.

Stott is an expert in paleoclimatology and was a reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He also recently co-authored a paper in Geophysical Research Letters tracing a 900-year history of monsoon variability in India.

The study, which analyzed isotopes in cave stalagmites, found correlations between recorded famines and monsoon failures, and found that some past monsoon failures appear to have lasted much longer than those that occurred during recorded history. The ongoing research is aimed at shedding light on the monsoon’s poorly understood but vital role in Earth’s climate.