[A-List] Solar Activity 'Not The Cause of Global Warming'

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

by Steve Connor

The Independent (July 11 2007)


Claims that increased solar activity is the cause of global warming -
rather than man-made greenhouse gases - have been comprehensively
disproved by a detailed study of the Sun.

Scientists have delivered the final blow to the theory that recent
global warming can be explained by variations in the natural cycles of
the Sun - a favourite refuge for climate sceptics who dismiss the
influence of greenhouse-gas emissions.

An analysis of the records of all of the Sun's activities over the past
few decades - such as sunspot cycles and magnetic fields - shows that
since 1985 solar activity has decreased significantly, while global
warming has continued to increase.

Mike Lockwood, of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Chilton,
Oxfordshire, said: "In 1985, the Sun did a U-turn in every respect. It
no longer went in the right direction to contribute to global warming.
We think it's almost completely conclusive proof that the Sun does not
account for the recent increases in global warming."

The study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal
Society A, shows there is no doubt that solar activity over the past
twenty years has run in the opposite direction to global warming, and
therefore cannot explain rises in average global temperatures.

Dr Lockwood and his colleague Claus Frohlich, of the World Radiation
Centre in Davos Dorf, Switzerland, have produced the most powerful
counter argument to suggestions that current warming is part of the
natural cycle of solar activities. "There is considerable evidence for
solar influence on Earth's pre-industrial climate, and the Sun may well
have been a factor in post-industrial change in the first half of the
last century", they write.

However, since about 1940 there has been no evidence to suggest that
increases in global average temperatures were caused by solar activity.
"Our results show that the observed rapid rise in global mean
temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability,
whichever of the mechanisms is invoked and no matter how much the solar
variation is amplified", the two scientists said.

The theory that past changes in solar activity may have explained some
changes in the climate before the industrial revolution is not in
dispute. In previous centuries, for instance, notably between about 1420
and 1570, when the Vikings had to abandon their Greenland settlements,
solar minima corresponded with unusually cool weather, such as the
"little ice age" of the 17th century.

But climate sceptics have exploited this to dispute the idea that
man-made emissions are responsible for global warming. In the recent
Channel 4 programme The Great Global Warming Swindle, the rise in solar
activity over the latter half of the 20th century was erroneously
presented as perfectly matching the rise in global average temperatures.

Dr Lockwood said he was outraged when he saw the documentary, because of
the way the programme-makers used graphs of temperature rises and
sunspot cycles that were cut off in the 1980s, when the two trends went
in the opposite direction.

"The trouble is that the theory of solar activity and climate was being
misappropriated to apply to modern-day warming. The sceptics were taking
perfectly good science and bringing it into disrespect", Dr Lockwood said.

The Royal Society said yesterday: "There is a small minority which is
seeking to confuse the public on the causes of climate change. They are
often misrepresenting the science, when the reality is that the evidence
is getting stronger every day."

(c) 2007 Independent News and Media Limited

http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2753395.ece

http://www.countercurrents.org/connor110707.htm


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