The Solar Theory of Climate Change

[Hogeye]

From The Sunday Times
February 11, 2007

An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change

Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, says the orthodoxy must be challenged

When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works. We were treated to another dose of it recently when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the Summary for Policymakers that puts the political spin on an unfinished scientific dossier on climate change due for publication in a few months’ time. They declared that most of the rise in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases.

The small print explains “very likely” as meaning that the experts who made the judgment felt 90% sure about it. Older readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain’s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works.

Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised in favour of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported.

Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.

So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is “Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. While you’re at it, you might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you a refund if it’s confirmed that global warming has stopped. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.

That levelling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago.

Climate history and related archeology give solid support to the solar hypothesis. The 20th-century episode, or Modern Warming, was just the latest in a long string of similar events produced by a hyperactive sun, of which the last was the Medieval Warming.

The Chinese population doubled then, while in Europe the Vikings and cathedral-builders prospered. Fascinating relics of earlier episodes come from the Swiss Alps, with the rediscovery in 2003 of a long-forgotten pass used intermittently whenever the world was warm.

What does the Intergovernmental Panel do with such emphatic evidence for an alternation of warm and cold periods, linked to solar activity and going on long before human industry was a possible factor? Less than nothing. The 2007 Summary for Policymakers boasts of cutting in half a very small contribution by the sun to climate change conceded in a 2001 report.

Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with inconvenient discoveries about how the solar variations control the climate. The sun’s brightness may change too little to account for the big swings in the climate. But more than 10 years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism.

He saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun’s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier.

The only trouble with Svensmark’s idea — apart from its being politically incorrect — was that meteorologists denied that cosmic rays could be involved in cloud formation. After long delays in scraping together the funds for an experiment, Svensmark and his small team at the Danish National Space Center hit the jackpot in the summer of 2005.

In a box of air in the basement, they were able to show that electrons set free by cosmic rays coming through the ceiling stitched together droplets of sulphuric acid and water. These are the building blocks for cloud condensation. But journal after journal declined to publish their report; the discovery finally appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society late last year.

Thanks to having written The Manic Sun, a book about Svensmark’s initial discovery published in 1997, I have been privileged to be on the inside track for reporting his struggles and successes since then. The outcome is a second book, The Chilling Stars, co-authored by the two of us and published next week by Icon books. We are not exaggerating, we believe, when we subtitle it “A new theory of climate change”.

Where does all that leave the impact of greenhouse gases? Their effects are likely to be a good deal less than advertised, but nobody can really say until the implications of the new theory of climate change are more fully worked out.

The reappraisal starts with Antarctica, where those contradictory temperature trends are directly predicted by Svensmark’s scenario, because the snow there is whiter than the cloud-tops. Meanwhile humility in face of Nature’s marvels seems more appropriate than arrogant assertions that we can forecast and even control a climate ruled by the sun and the stars.

[Dardedar]

DAR
Now it's the cosmic rays doing it. My JW grandmother wrote me a letter last month saying Jehovah might use COSMIC RAYS to zap all of the bad people in the soon to come armageddon. That's only slightly less likely than Calder's thesis.
My rightwing friend Bill passed this very same article along to me a couple days ago. My response to him would be useful here:

***
DAR
I did some checking last night and was going
to give this a good roasting on the forum
tonight. But it's 9:00pm now and I have been
responding to other materal.
It hardly deserves it anyway. Besides the fact
that he clearly gets his facts wrong over and
over, here is what is really going on. He is
writing a book about this cosmic ray stuff and
wants to create a buzz about it. Here is what is
interesting to me. Many GW deniers mention that
during the 70's there was some buzz about the
earth perhaps entering a cooling period. The buzz
was mostly in non-science works like "Newsweek"
and such, not peer-reviewed scientific material.
So there is no comparison, at all, to the
mountains of evidence for, and unanimous
consensus (among climatologists) regarding
today's human caused/influenced global warming.

And guess what, this Nigel Calder fellow wrote
a book in 1974 called: "The Weather Machine And
The Threat Of Ice (BBC Books)." It warned of a
imminent ice age within one year. So the guy was
wrong and on the nutty fringe back then and
apparently he still is.

If there is a specific claim in his article
that you find persuasive, let me know and I'll
respond to it. Otherwise this paragraph from the
award winning climatology site realclimate.org,
should suffice to show why Calder's main idea
probably isn't going anywhere:

***
12 Feb 2007
Nigel Calder in the Times

As a prelude to a new book, Nigel Calder (who was
the editor of New Scientist for four years in the
1960s) has written an op-ed for the Times (UK)
basically recapitulating the hype over the
Svensmark cosmic ray/climate experiments we
reported on a couple of month ago --see Taking Cosmic Rays for a spin.

At the time we pointed out that while the
experiments were potentially of interest, they
are a long way from actually demonstrating an
influence of cosmic rays on the real world
climate, and in no way justify the hyperbole that
Svensmark and colleagues put into their press
releases and more 'popular' pieces. Even if the
evidence for solar forcing were legitimate, any
bizarre calculus that takes evidence for solar
forcing of climate as evidence against greenhouse
gases for current climate change is simply wrong.
Whether cosmic rays are correlated with climate
or not, they have been regularly measured by the
neutron monitor at Climax Station (Colorado)
since 1953 and show no long term trend. No trend
= no explanation for current changes."

Link

D.

There are many more extensives responses to Svensmark’s idea in the peer reviewed literature. It's unlikely to go anywhere because of the point made in the last sentence above (bold mine). But maybe they'll sell some books. Calder probably sold several copies of his quacky 1974 idea that the ice age would come in a year.
There are a lot of really desperate people right now looking to find any cause for the heating other than the one climatologists are 95% certain to be causing most of it. Anything to avoid eating that big juicy crow:

[Hogeye]

If you read the blog comments in the Nigel Calder in the Times link Darrel gave, it turns out that the RC guys basically agree with the solar radiation theory to a great degree. ("Many of us at RC have published papers on observational and modelling evidence for solar forcing effect on climate.") They admit that for all of history at least until the industrial era, solar radiation was a major, if not the main, factor. They admit that the solar radiation theory probably accouts for the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age. The only quibble they have is about whether solar radiation or anthropomorphic greenhouse gasses were more important for the late 20th century warming.

Luckily, the two theories make different predictions about the early 21st century. The solar radiation theory predicts a leveling off or reduction of global temperatures; the greenhouse gas theory predicts more and increased warming. So far, instrumental and satellite data favors the solar radiation theory, since it has yet to exceed the 1998 high. So we'll see. If we go on 5 more years without exceeding 1998, then hopefully the alarmists will admit their computer models were wrong. They can't use the random walk or the El Nino excuse forever.

Darrel, how many years will it take of <= 1998 global temperature before you admit that the catastrophic global warming due to anthropomorphic greenhouse gasses theory is probably wrong?

BTW, the "no trend = no explanation" argument is bogus. It assumes a simple linear relationship, when it's likely that climate is more complex than that. E.g. Perhaps there is a cumulative effect? Or perhaps solar radiation is augmented/supplemented by other factors? But so long as the politically correct GHG theory is favored and almost exclusively funded, we probably won't know what these factors are.

[Dardedar]

...it turns out that the RC guys basically agree with the solar radiation theory to a great degree. ("Many of us at RC have published papers on observational and modelling evidence for solar forcing effect on climate.")

DAR
Funny how you consistently imagine people are agreeing with you when they are not (or at least it used to be funny). The context and thus result of the above mentioned "observational and modelling evidence for solar forcing effect on climate"...is, as I quoted the RC boys above:

"Even if the evidence for solar forcing were legitimate, any bizarre calculus that takes evidence for solar forcing of climate as evidence against greenhouse gases for current climate change is simply wrong."

They admit that the solar radiation theory probably accouts for the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age.

DAR
Citation please. See updates on your MWP and LIA below.

So far, instrumental and satellite data favors the solar radiation theory, since it has yet to exceed the 1998 high.

DAR
We've tied if not exceeded it at least once, with several very close, just as models predict. I see you are still trying to float the absurd idea that some model predicts anything remotely linear and that a single '98 spike, taken on it's own, means anything.

Darrel, how many years will it take of <= 1998 global temperature before you admit that the catastrophic global warming due to anthropomorphic greenhouse gasses theory is probably wrong?

DAR
I don't know what a reasonable scientist would say here. A decade or two? And it would matter if it dropped considerable versus a consistent near tie. I don't expect you or many other true believers to ever admit your position on this is wrong.

BTW, the "no trend = no explanation" argument is bogus.

DAR
Of course it is. In your world "no trend = anything you can imagine as long as it is consistent with GW denier dogma." Creationist science operates in a very similar, no identical, manner.

It assumes a simple linear relationship, when it's likely that climate is more complex than that. E.g. Perhaps there is a cumulative effect?

DAR
So your cosmic ray argument is based upon a cumulative effect of "no trend." That's funny.

Or perhaps solar radiation is augmented/supplemented by other factors?

DAR
That's what your evidence boils down to at best, a "perhaps." A cooda bean. No doubt this is why this hypothesis isn't persuading anyone with knowledge in the field considering the mountains of evidence for the other theories.

UPDATE on your MWP and LIA (i.e. hockeystick) status. New evidence, and they didn't even use that tricky word "plausible":

"Given all of the hoopla since the TAR, many of us were curious to see what the new report would have to say about paleoclimate reconstructions of the past 1000 years. Contrarians will no doubt be disappointed here. The conclusions have been significantly strengthened relative to what was in the TAR, something that of course should have been expected given the numerous additional studies that have since been done that all point in the same direction. The conclusion that large-scale recent warmth likely exceeds the range seen in past centuries has been extended from the past 1000 years in the TAR, to the past 1300 years in the current report, and the confidence in this conclusion has been upped from "likely" in the TAR to "very likely" in the current report for the past half millennium. This is just one of the many independent lines of evidence now pointing towards a clear anthropogenic influence on climate, but given all of the others, the paleoclimate reconstructions are now even less the central pillar of evidence for the human influence on climate than they have been incorrectly portrayed to be."

LINK

[Hogeye]

"Even if the evidence for solar forcing were legitimate, any bizarre calculus that takes evidence for solar forcing of climate as evidence against greenhouse gases for current climate change is simply wrong."

I agree. That doesn't contradict anything I said. I repeat: A reasonable test is whether the solar theory predicts better than the greehouse gas theory in the coming years.

Hogeye> They admit that the solar radiation theory probably accouts for the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age.

Darrel> Citation please.

From discussion of the same article cited above Nigel Calder in the Times:

Jeff Weffer> And some proxies such as C-14 production indicate old Sol has alot of variability, enough to explain the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, the Modern Warming etc.

Gavin> Why do you think any of what you said is controversial? Look at my own papers for ample evidence that people are actively researching these issues (most recently, Shindell et al 2006 ).

We've tied if not exceeded it [1998 temp] at least once, with several very close, just as models predict.

The greenhouse gas alarmist theory predicts increasing global temperatures due to the increasing levels of CO2. Even with noise, that implies that upward trend. If the data does not show an upward trend, the model fails. But 21st century data so far indicates no such trend. It seems to have leveled off. We need a larger sample of course, but at this point it doesn't look good for the alarmists' favorite theory.

So your cosmic ray argument is based upon a cumulative effect of "no trend."

It's based on the cumulative effect of high levels of solar radiation. Carbon-14 levels are a known proxy for solar radiation. The following graph taken from here shows how carbon levels coincide remarkably with global temperature.



Note that the LIA and the MWP are clearly seen. Sunspot graphs are similar.

No one should be surprised that AR4 comes to a stronger conclusion. In particular, the report concludes that human influences on climate are 'very likely' (> 90% chance) - link

LOL! The ol' strawman trick. Hardly anyone disagrees that humans have some effect. What deniers deny, of course, is that human influences are causing catastrophic changes in temperature, i.e. significantly above the natural range. We also deny the political (as opposed to scientific) claim that massive statist authoritarian solutions are required to stop the sky from falling.

[Dardedar]

Darrel> Citation please.

Hog> From discussion of the same article cited above

DAR
Oh, here is the further context from something you excerpted earlier:

"[Response: Nobody's saying the sun has no effect. Many of us at RC have published papers on observational and modelling evidence for solar forcing effect on climate. The point of contention which always seems to come up is whether it has anything to do with the current climate change (i.e. the last few decades). The answer there is no (or more precisely, not very much). -gavin]"

The greenhouse gas alarmist theory predicts increasing global temperatures due to the increasing levels of CO2. Even with noise, that implies that upward trend. If the data does not show an upward trend, the model fails. But 21st century data so far indicates no such trend.

DAR
The 21st century you lived in or the 21st century everyone else lived in?
Do you ever wonder if you are the only sane person and everyone else is crazy? (Or vice versa?)

...at this point it doesn't look good for the alarmists' favorite theory.

DAR
You're right. I am sure the world's climatologists are very concerned that your latest scientific findings are going to overturn what they have found. You should submit it for peer review.

D.

[Hogeye]

Response: Nobody's saying the sun has no effect. Many of us at RC have published papers on observational and modelling evidence for solar forcing effect on climate. The point of contention which always seems to come up is whether it has anything to do with the current climate change (i.e. the last few decades). The answer there is no (or more precisely, not very much). -gavin

Right. Gavin agrees that solar radiation was a major factor up until "the current climate change." He denies (irrationally IMO) that it is significant anymore.

Hogeye> But 21st century data so far indicates no such trend.

Darrel> The 21st century you lived in or the 21st century everyone else lived in?

The 21st century we both live in, according to the data we both have posted. Are you now changing your mind and denying that both NASA and the English group show no year this century exceeding 1998?

I am sure the world's climatologists are very concerned that your latest scientific findings are going to overturn what they have found. You should submit it for peer review.

I haven't offered any scientific findings. I merely pointed out that the data so far this century does not support the alarmist theory, and that we'll have to wait for more data to decide one way or the other. Get a grip, man!

[Dardedar]

The 21st century we both live in, according to the data we both have posted.

DAR
How soon you misremember.

Are you now changing your mind and denying that both NASA and the English group show no year this century exceeding 1998?

DAR
As I posted on Feb 14:

"On February 8, 2007, climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) announced that 2006 was the fifth-warmest year in the past century. GISS scientists estimated that the five warmest years on record were, in descending order, 2005, 1998, 2002, 2003, and 2006."

With this accompanying chart:



Look closely. 2005 is higher than 1998 (not that it matters). Years are just one unit of measure. January (last month) was the hottest month ever recorded. So I guess you can restart your little counter and now start saying that we peaked in January and are on the way down. Idiocy.

And as I posted yesterday, in a link (showing the latest findings):

***
"Global temperature change

James Hansen*, Makiko Sato*, Reto Ruedy*, Ken Lo*, David W. Lea, and Martin Medina-Elizade

*National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Columbia University Earth Institute, and §Sigma Space Partners, Inc., 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025; and Department of Earth Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106

Contributed by James Hansen, July 31, 2006

Global surface temperature has increased {approx}0.2°C per decade in the past 30 years, similar to the warming rate predicted in the 1980s in initial global climate model simulations with transient greenhouse gas changes. Warming is larger in the Western Equatorial Pacific than in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific over the past century, and we suggest that the increased West–East temperature gradient may have increased the likelihood of strong El Niños, such as those of 1983 and 1998. Comparison of measured sea surface temperatures in the Western Pacific with paleoclimate data suggests that this critical ocean region, and probably the planet as a whole, is approximately as warm now as at the Holocene maximum and within {approx}1°C of the maximum temperature of the past million years. We conclude that global warming of more than {approx}1°C, relative to 2000, will constitute "dangerous" climate change as judged from likely effects on sea level and extermination of species."
***

Here is their chart:



Look closely. Going year by year, 1998 has been exceeded. Using a five year mean gives a distinct upward trend also. Boring.

[Dardedar]

DAR
Oh, two more studies on cosmic rays and solar forcing:

***
Atmospheric electric fields at the Kennedy Space Center, 1997â??2005: No evidence for effects of global warming or modulation by galactic cosmic rays Geophysical Research Letters 33 (10), 10814 (2006)

LINK

Solar activity, cosmic rays, and Earth's temperature: A millennium-scale comparison

I G Usoskin et al.
Journal of Geophysical Research 110 (a10), 10102 (2005)

LINK

..."Comparison of the Sun-related data sets with various reconstructions of terrestrial Northern Hemisphere mean surface temperatures reveals consistently positive correlation coefficients for the sunspot numbers and consistently negative correlation coefficients for the cosmic rays. "...

[Hogeye]

The highest global surface temperature in more than a century of instrumental data was recorded in the 2005 calendar year in the GISS annual analysis. However, the error bar on the data implies that 2005 is practically in a dead heat with 1998, the warmest previous year. (link)

The time series shows the combined global land and marine surface temperature record from 1850 to 2006. The year 2006 was sixth warmest on record, exceeded by 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002 and 2004. ... The warmest year of the entire series has been 1998, with a temperature of 0.546°C above the 1961-90 mean. ([url=http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/[/url])

In short, the English group says 1998 was hottest; the NASA group says that 2005 might have been hotter, but is "practically in a dead heat with 1998." The English group supports my contention that global temperature peaked in 1998. Their graph shows a slope of zero at 2006. Like I said, we won't really know for sure whether it has peaked or not for years.



Thanks for the links to new (contradictory) studies, Darrel. The first study shows "no evidence" connecting cosmic rays and global temperatures, while the second shows very strong evidence! And for a much longer time period than previous studies. As more evidence comes in, no doubt the alarmists will have to reconsider their greenhouse gas alarmist theory.

Comparison of the Sun-related data sets with various reconstructions of terrestrial Northern Hemisphere mean surface temperatures reveals consistently positive correlation coefficients for the sunspot numbers and consistently negative correlation coefficients for the cosmic rays. The significance levels reach up to 99% but vary strongly for the different data sets.

As you'll recall, the more cosmic rays the sun allows through, the more cloud cover, and the cooler the climate. The intensification of the sun's magnetic field during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, thus less cloud cover, hence warmer temperatures. The study showed that negative correllation, just as predicted by the solar theory of global temperature.

[Dardedar]

The first study shows "no evidence" connecting cosmic rays and global temperatures, while the second shows very strong evidence!"

DAR
You should read carefully: "consistently positive correlation coefficients for the sunspot numbers" over a thousand years. Perhaps you forgot that part.

I have roasted this notion extensively in my line by line debunk of Don Bright's ridiculous letter.

I gave the following four sources:

1) Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeller at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York: "there has been no effective change in any solar indices since about 1950"

2)
"solar contributions [are about] 10% or less for 1950-2000 and near 0% and about 10% in 1980-2000 using the PMOD and ACRIM data, respectively. LINK

3) "According to PMOD at the World Radiation Center there has been no increase in solar irradiance since at least 1978 when satellite observations began. This means that for the last thirty years, while the temperature has been rising fastest, the sun has shown no trend.

4) There has been work on reconstructing past trends in solar irradiance over the last century before satellite records were available. Acording to the Max Plank Institute there has been no increase in solar irradiance since around 1940."

Links provided at the roast of Bright's letter.

the sun's magnetic field during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays,

DAR
Already dealt with in my first response above:

"Whether cosmic rays are correlated with climate
or not, they have been regularly measured by the
neutron monitor at Climax Station (Colorado)
since 1953 and show no long term trend. No trend
= no explanation for current changes."

[Hogeye]

You should read carefully: "consistently positive correlation coefficients for the sunspot numbers" over a thousand years. Perhaps you forgot that part.

No - that's what makes that recent study so convincing. Instead of finding a correlation for only the last 400 years, it traces the correlation back 1800 years. Contrary to your "since 1953 and show no long term trend," this study ("Solar activity, cosmic rays, and Earth's temperature: A millennium-scale comparison") apparently shows a strong correllation not only since 1953, but previous time periods. And it contradicts your four points.

Now of course you like to ignore everything but the blade of your illusory hockey stick, but most of us regard climate as occuring from ancient times. Saying "No trend = no explanation for current changes" is of course inane, since "the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity." The high level of activity accounts for the recent warming, and is a better explanation than the anthropomorphic greenhouse gas theory. The latter theory predicts that stratospheric temperatures would rise faster than surface temperatures. In fact, they do not. For more on this, see the movie I posted a link to in another thread: "The Great Global Warming Swindle."

[Dardedar]

...apparently shows a strong correllation not only since 1953,...

DAR
As usual all I had to do was check your claim. As I suspected:

"The major part of the correlation is due to the similarity of the long-term trends in the data sets."

It doesn't say anything about "since 1953." That part came from your bum. The above strongly implies such a short time reference is "out of the focus" of this study so it wouldn't contradict the four lines of evidence I gave showing "no increase in solar irradiance" since about 1950.
Be careful not to confuse millennium scale studies with the four I gave which are much more specific, precise and apply to recent times (and are not limited to the "Northern Hemisphere").

D.

[Hogeye]

Right, the study doesn't say "since 1953;" it shows correlation not limited only to that recent period. That's what makes it such strong evidence for the solar theory. Instead of only showing it for the last 400 years as in earlier studies, it shows correlation going much further back.

You seem to be mistakenly taking the longer time period to mean that the correlated data points are separated by a longer time. If so, you are misreading the abstract. What it is saying is that the correlation not only holds for the last 400 years, but also holds for the last 1800 (and the last 50).

I wonder what the alarmist RealClimate site will say about the study? If they are up to their usual form, they will villanize the scientists who wrote it.

[Dardedar]

...the study doesn't say "since 1953;" it shows correlation not limited only to that recent period.

DAR
Really. Glad you noticed that. Afterall, "since 1953" would only represent about 5% of the time period examined (1,000 years). Does it need to be said that a 1,000 year study is not limited to 55 years?

This 5% could be out considerably (and actually is), and their statement "consistently positive correlation coefficients for the sunspot numbers..." would still be correct if the other 950 years (!) showed consistent positive correlation.

We have a clue that they mean this because they say:

"The major part of the correlation is due to the similarity of the long-term trends in the data sets."

That's what makes it such strong evidence for the solar theory.

DAR
Recommendation: Don't use binoculars as reading glasses. Don't take a magnifying glass to a ball game.

The 1,000 year study found; "consistently positive correlation coefficients for the sunspot numbers..."

Due to:

"the similarity of the long-term trends in the data sets."

Here is a nice chart showing how much we have deviated during the last 30 years or so.



"The yellow line shows the global mean temperature from CRU for comparison."

From:

Recent Warming But No Trend in Galactic Cosmic Rays

D.

[Hogeye]

It seems we agree, except perhaps on the definition of "climate."

We agree there are "consistently positive correlation coefficients for the sunspot numbers..."

We agree that "the major part of the correlation is due to the similarity of the long-term trends" of temperature and solar events.

We disagree on whether one 30 year sample adequately represents climate. I think climate is a long-term thing; you apparently take it to be short-term.

[Dardedar]

We disagree on whether one 30 year sample adequately represents climate.

DAR
That would be true if the 30 year sample was all we had. But of course it isn't all we have. The 30 year sample doesn't exist in isolation outside of a context. The 30 year sample is important because of it's relation to the 1,000 year context.

D.