Posted on 08/26/2008 10:11:46 AM PDT by sionnsar
CNSNews.com) New scientific evidence suggests there is a stronger link between solar activity and climate trends on Earth than there is with greenhouse gases, Fred Singer, an atmospheric and space physicist, told CNSNews.com.
The new data call into question whether scientific evidence shows that global warming is a man-made phenomenon and suggests that natural forces, as opposed to human activity, may drive global climate change.
Singer is one of many scientists who say recent scientific observations have determined that solar variability or fluctuations in the suns radiation directly affects climate change on Earth.
In the broad sense, the Earths climate is determined by solar radiation, Singer said. If the radiation changes, so will the general climate.
Singer said scientists have long theorized that changes in the suns activity also impact the amount of cosmic rays reaching the earth affecting the Earths cloudiness and thereby the climate.
Cosmic rays are high energy particles of extraterrestrial origin that collide at almost the speed of light with atoms in the upper atmosphere of the earth.
The hypothesis is underpinned by the idea that variations in the suns irradiance electromagnetic energy emitted by the sun that reaches earths surface translate into climate changes on Earth in two key ways: 1) cosmic rays create either more or fewer low, cooling clouds in our planets atmosphere; and 2) ozone changes driven by solar activity in the stratosphere create varying degrees of heating in the lower atmosphere.
(Ozone refers to oxygen atoms that protect the planet from harmful ultraviolet radiation. Ozone occurs naturally in the stratosphere, which is the upper atmosphere.)
Recent experiments that have been performed using weather balloons and satellites actually confirm the hypothesis, he said.
There is now little doubt that solar-wind variability [streams of ionized gases that radiate out from the sun] is the primary cause of climate change on a decadal time scale, Singer said.
The stronger the solar wind, the more the earth is shielded from cosmic rays, he explained.
Singer said the key to understanding the impact of the suns changes on Earths climate is time many scientists only take account of the suns long-term effects.
We are not concerned about hundreds of thousands of years or (millennia). We are concerned about decades [in the study], because we are interested in what fits the human life span, he said. It looks as if solar activity, not solar radiation itself, determines what happens with the climate.
The impact of solar variability is explained in a report Singer co-authored and edited in cooperation with other scientists for the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), which also claims that the mathematical models upon which the United Nations bases its global warming assessment are pre-programmed to produce results that substantiate the notion of anthropogenic (or man-made) global warming.
The report, Nature, Not Human Activity Rules the Climate, has helped open the way for scientists to perform meaningful research in areas that have been largely unexplored and under-emphasized in previous studies, Singer said in the interview.
For example, he said, there are research efforts now underway that set about to examine the connection between cosmic rays and cloud formation presumed in the sun-climate theory.
This is the kind of scientific endeavor that has gone missing in government studies that assume human activity predominates over natural influences, Singer continued. Although it was long assumed that the sun was a constant star, one that did not experience any variability (changes) in its irradiance, this has turned out not to be the case.
To the extent that it does look at solar variability at all, which is limited, the U.N.s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been disingenuous in its approach to solar variability by virtue of focusing on relatively minute solar cycle changes that overlook cosmic rays, the Singer report suggests.
There are some significant solar changes involving solar wind, for instance, that have ramifications for Earths climate, which are de-emphasized in the IPPC studies, he said.
By disregarding or ignoring the very much larger changes of solar ultraviolet or of the solar wind and its magnetic-field effect on cosmic rays and thus on cloud coverage, the IPCC has managed to trivialize the climate effects of solar variability, Singers non-government report states.
Moreover, there is large separation between the fingerprints of global warming that researchers can actually observe in the atmosphere and the fingerprints predicted by scientific models, Singer said. Any warming that follows from greenhouse gases would appear in the form of warming that increases with altitude, his report explains.
However, the observations derived from satellites and balloons actually show no increasing warming, but a slight cooling with altitude in the zone of the atmosphere where greenhouse gas theories anticipate warming, Singer said.
The U.N.s (IPPC) authors avoided connecting the dots and making the appropriate observations, despite having all the necessary data because the end result would run counter to their mission, Singer suggested.
This thinking is shared by Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) in Washington, D.C.
Anything that falls beyond the purview of anthropogenic (human) caused global warming is not going to be seriously investigated by the IPCC, Cohen told CNSNews.com. Thats why the IPCC should never be viewed as a scientific manual. It was created for the sole purpose of supporting the notion of human-induced climate change.
Meanwhile, not every scientist is moved by the arguments that appear in Singers new report.
There are compelling scientific studies that would indicate the warming trend that occurred in the later part of the 20th century cannot be attributed to cosmic rays or other solar activity, according to Jay Gulledge, a senior scientist with the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
Gulledge cites Sami Solanki, an astronomy professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, who also serves as director at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, and Michael Lockwood, a physicist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the United Kingdom, among others to prove his point.
Solanki and his colleagues acknowledge that while sun spot activity in the 20th century may have contributed to some warming in the 20th century, it is probably not responsible for the warming that has occurred in the past few decades.
In an article in Nature magazine, Solanki and his colleagues wrote: "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."
Although solar activity may partially account for some of the warming in the early part of the 20th Century, all of the best research concerning the warming that has occurred in the past two to three decades cannot be explained by way of cosmic rays, Gulledge added.
Nevertheless, the Singer-led Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change Report sees compelling evidence in the other direction based on actual observations, rather than scientific models.
Whats controversial in my view is not the fact that solar activity affects the climate but the exact mechanism, the details, Singer told CNSNews.com. Theres overwhelming evidence, its also in my report, that solar activity varying on a time scale of decades produces corresponding affects on the climate on decadal scale.
How DARE he or anyone else question the Inventor of the Internet!!!!
Sir Abert Gore winner of the Nobel Peace Prize has said the debate is over. Only a bigotted person is not voting for Obamessiah would continue to argue faced with that overwhelming fact.
BTTT
We have a winner!
“Ready the “Comfy Chair” for the heretic”
PING!
The Best Global Warming Videos on the Internet |
Yep the debate is over, Al Gore said so.
I need to buy some carbon credits. Every time I exhale I produce the dreaded carbon dioxide and contribute to global warming.
And yet, STILL, our presumptive nominee, John McCain, still is in total support of this scam of the Marxists/Liberals.
New scientific evidence suggests there is a stronger link between solar activity and climate trends on Earth than there is with greenhouse gases...
Al Gore and his Solar Deniers aren't going to like this!
The sun is more powerful than my SUV? Who knew?
Any candidate that refuse to ‘believe’ about MM Global Warming gets my vote....Except for Barry ;)
Now there is a novel approach. Empiricism.
Lot harder to monkey with [properly] observed data than it is to juice up your computer model to get predetermined, desired results.
dang... who'da thought my second grade nun was right... the sun causes climage change...
the point was driven home in Meteorology 101 at JHU...
Duh!
Anyone that ever bothered to study science in high school should have been able to deduce for themselves the power of the Sun.
After the fall of monolithic communism the left moved post haste into the green movements. The desired result was to create issues that would immobilize western governments. They found their holy of holies in the global warming scam.
After all individuals can do nothing in this respect so it was time for big government to move in:
1) more taxes to fight global warming
2) more control of the population
It worked for the lefties.
Just goes to show you that common sense and hard science are no hopers in the battle with the lying left. We’re going to have to get down in the mud and make them play our game.
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