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Soon told TG Daily that the lack of additional energy resulting from a decrease in sunspots is directly responsible for colder temperatures experienced in recent years.<<
I’m not sure this is good news. he seems to be saying that the reason temperatures have not been higher has been because of a temporary low in sunspots - that doesn’t mean CO2 isn’t still a big a factor.
By themselves, sunspots don't prove or disprove the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. But there are other things that do, such as the fact that changes in levels of carbon dioxide lag temperature changes by about 800 years, the fact that temperatures and levels of carbon dioxide have both been significantly higher than now over the last 10,000 years (and have been much higher than now over the past 300 million years,) and finally the fact that the contribution of carbon dioxide to greenhouse warming asymptotically approaches zero as its level increases—and we're way past the level where any change to the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide has any meaningful effect either way (it would take a massive reduction to levels way below any that have been seen for many millions of years to change that.)
I'd like to see why skepticism about a trace gas at 388 parts per million, IIRC, is supposed to elicit much concern, IHMO, when it has so many natural sinks.
That's EXACTLY what it means. If CO2 driven "greenhouse" warming were of the order of magnitude claimed by its zealots, the effect of the radiative changes in the sun would be of no cosequence to the earth's temperature, and global warming zealots would not be scrabling to cover their collective "assets."
And your gloss over of the fact of global COOLING (see your comment "the reason tempratures have not been higher") is pretty revealing as to your own personal agenda.
But, you are still good for a laugh from time to time.
“that doesn’t mean CO2 isn’t still a big a factor”
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CO2 is a lagging indicator when global temperatures increase.
The lag is about 700 - 800 years. As temperatures increase, the oceans release CO2; as they decrease the oceans absorb CO2.
Al Goreacle’s flaw in logic is that just because two things (increased temp and increased CO2) occur at the same time, does not mean one causes the other.
But other scientists have shown that C02 isn't a big factor. It's much less a factor than water vapor, for example. And it's at a saturation point, so more won't matter.
Here's lecture by a geologist touching on a number of the problems with the warming hypothesis, including the trouble with the idea that C02 is an important warming factor going forward:
Part1
Part2
Part3
Part4
“I’m not sure this is good news. he seems to be saying that the reason temperatures have not been higher has been because of a temporary low in sunspots - that doesn’t mean CO2 isn’t still a big a factor.”
What is not said here is that sunspot activity was unusually high before 1999 (the period of substantial warming). If climate modelers honestly included the strong correlation between sunspots and temperature into the pre-1999 models, there wouldn’t be much warming left unexplained for them to blame on CO2. That’s why it won’t happen.
You notice the whole anti-carbon crowd is slowly shifting their emphasis to “well, even if it doesn’t cause global warming, it makes the oceans acidic.” They want to lose carbon as an energy source, no matter what. An endless stream of rationales will be invented until they get their way.