What is the pro-global warming response to the great sun activity argument?

Question

I am doing research into global warming theories to make up my mind whether I believe it is man-made or no.

The most compelling argument I have heard is that it is not man-made, but solar-made. The basic concept is that the sun is on a cycle of greater activity which is expelling more heat which is naturally heating the earth's surface more. The CO2 is a result of the heating, not the cause.

I haven't found the pro-global warming response to this argument and would like to hear both sides.

Would anyone be able to share it with me?

Answer 1

It's pretty simple really.  Global warming has accelerated rapidly over the past 30 years.  In fact, over that period, the rate of warming has been 20 times greater than when the planet naturally came out of the last ice age.

Over the past 30 years, solar output has decreased slightly.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/62902...

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/pro...

Here is a plot comparing global temperature, CO2, and sunspot activity over the past 150 years:

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-...

As you can see, there is simply no way the Sun can be responsible for the warming over the past 30 years.  Benjamin has done a great job summarizing all the scientific papers which have proven this.  The Scafetta & West paper he discusses first concludes that at most 35% of the recent warming is due to the Sun, and that paper makes some very questionable assumptions to make the number even that high.

Answer 2

The solar activity argument, long considered unlikely, was decisively refuted in 2007:

"Recent oppositely directed trends in solar

climate forcings and the global mean surface

air temperature", Lockwood and Frolich (2007), Proc. R. Soc. A

doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.1880

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/pro...

News article at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6290228.st...

Even Foxnews agrees:

"While evidence suggests fluctuations in solar activity can affect climate on Earth, and that it has done so in the past, the majority of climate scientists and astrophysicists agree that the sun is not to blame for the current and historically sudden uptick in global temperatures on Earth, which seems to be mostly a mess created by our own species."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,2583...

Jello ask us to look at a chart.  The chart stops around 1980, and the data after that is VERY different.

CO2 is BOTH a cause and an effect of heating.  That's basic science.  In the past CO2 lagged temperature rise by hundreds of years, because it was mostly an effect.  This time THERE IS NO LAG, because, for the first time, CO2 is mostly the cause.

Answer 3

Given all of the recent studies published on solar output, it is amazing how many people still blame the recent global warming on the sun. The reality is that solar irradiance has not increased during recent decades. The following are excerpts from recent research on the link between recent global warming and solar activity (the first report linked is the most liberal):

Scafetta, 2006

"We estimate that the sun contributed as much as 45–50% of the 1900–2000 global warming, and 25–35% of the 1980–2000 global warming. These results, while confirming that anthropogenic-added climate forcing might have progressively played a dominant role in climate change during the last century.

http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/20...

Foukal, 2006

"The variations measured from spacecraft since 1978 are too small to have contributed appreciably to accelerated global warming over the past 30 years."

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v44...

http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/mpa/publi...

Foukal, 2006

"Our results imply that, over the past century, climate change due to human influences must far outweigh the effects of changes in the Sun's brightness. … Variations of this magnitude are too small to have contributed appreciably to the accelerated global warming observed since the mid-1970s, according to the study, and there is no sign of a net increase in brightness over the period."

http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/b...

Lockwood, 2007

"The analysis shows that global warming since 1985 has been caused neither by an increase in solar radiation nor by a decrease in the flux of galactic cosmic rays."

http://www.petedecarlo.com/files/448008a...

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/pro...

Lockwood, 2007

“There is considerable evidence for solar influence on the Earth’s pre-industrial climate and the Sun may well have been a factor in post-industrial climate change in the first half of the last century. Here we show that over the past 20 years, all the trends in the Sun that could have had an influence on the Earth’s climate have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures.”

http://publishing.royalsociety.org/media...

Solanki, 2004

"Researchers at the MPS have shown that the Sun can be responsible for, at most, only a small part of the warming over the last 20-30 years. They took the measured and calculated variations in the solar brightness over the last 150 years and compared them to the temperature of the Earth. Although the changes in the two values tend to follow each other for roughly the first 120 years, the Earth’s temperature has risen dramatically in the last 30 years while the solar brightness has not appreciably increased in this time."

http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsD...

Ammann, 2007

“Although solar and volcanic effects appear to dominate most of the slow climate variations within the past thousand years, greenhouse gas effects have dominated the last century.”

http://www.aimes.ucar.edu/MEETINGS/2005_...

et. cetera

Other than the fact that such a hypothesis is not backed by observation, there are a few problems additional problems with the assumption that the majority of recent global warming is caused by the sun. (1) Most importantly, such an argument completely ignores the fact that increases in greenhouse gases will force an increase in global temperatures (regardless of the question over whether solar irradiance is stable or not.)

(2) The warmest years in history, 1998, 2005, and 2007 have occurred near the "solar minimum" troughs of the 11-year solar cycle. Such an observation might suggest that small increases in solar irradiance cannot be the main force that is driving our recent global warming. The most liberal estimates of recent increases in solar irradiance is a smaller amount than the difference in irradiance between "solar maximum" and "solar minimum" of the 11-years solar cycle.

(3) Increases in solar activity should warm the entire atmosphere, right? Cooling in the lower stratosphere has been observed during recent decades.

Note to Dr Jello…

1. I love the quote from NASA, but I fail to see how it fits into your claim. You might as well be arguing that the sky is blue and the grass is green; no one is claiming that the sky is of a different color, just like no one is denying that “variability in the amount of energy from the sun has caused climate changes in the past.” Everyone understands that the ice ages are caused by the Milankovitch cycles, or “wobbles” within Earth’s orbit. These cycles change “the distribution and amount of sunlight that reaches Earth” and the result is glacial and interglacial periods.

If one bothers to read anything by NASA, then they would understand that the organization 100% supports the fact that increases in greenhouse gases are responsible for our recent global warming.  Here is one small summary by NASA:

http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/global_war...

Also, you are confusing the changes that occurred during ice ages with recent global warming. There have been NO recent “wobbles” in the orbit of Earth.

2. I love that your source is Habibullo Abdusamatov. Again, no one is denying the fact that changes in the sun affect climate on Earth.  However, Abdusamatov actually believe the exact opposite of what you do.  He believes that solar irradiance has DECREASED in recent decades, not increased. Abdusamatov has quite publicly claimed that the sun is getting cooler, and Earth will soon enter a “deep freeze.”  

"The solar irradiance began to drop in the 1990s, and a minimum will be reached by approximately 2040," Abdussamatov said. "It will cause a steep cooling of the climate on Earth in 15 to 20 years."[1]

Answer 4

Here is a scientist who has done the research and discovered the Sun is the source for all warming on Earth.

"Global warming results not from the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but from an unusually high level of solar radiation and a lengthy - almost throughout the last century - growth in its intensity," Abdusamatov told RIA Novosti in an interview.

"It is no secret that when they go up, temperatures in the world's oceans trigger the emission of large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So the common view that man's industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations."

Now let's hear from NASA:

"Variability in the amount of energy from the sun has caused climate changes in the past. It is now accepted that the global cooling during Ice Ages is the result of changes in the distribution and amount of sunlight that reaches Earth. During the last Ice Age, the globally averaged temperature of Earth was about 6°C colder than it is today.

Even the climate changes of the 20th century may have a significant solar component. Figure 3 shows comparisons of globally averaged temperature and solar activity. Many scientists find that these correlations are convincing evidence that the sun has contributed to the global warming of the 20th century."

Look at the chart ploting sunspots with global temps:

http://www.research.noaa.gov/spotlite/ar...

Answer 5

this is our lot in life it wont be stoped it is way out of your hands don't worry about it ,I myself have land way up in the mountains not so I can escape it but so that I may enjoy the time I have here,you should just go about your life,and be good.

Answer 6

The 1st link shows the updated sunspot activity that Dr Jello doesn't want you to see (his only goes to 1985, 23 years ago) from NASA. The one I attached was updated December 2007.

The last link shows temps from NASA showing 2005 as the highest recorded temperature, and at a time we are at a solar minimum. So, how can anyone say this time it's all caused by the sun? If it were only sunspot activity, you should see temps go up and down with the 11 year cycle. According to the NASA links, that is not happening. We need something else, and that is CO2.

Answer 7

Likewise, I haven't seen any GW skeptics produce a compelling argument for a solar cause of the current warming. There simply haven't been any trends in solar irradiance sufficient to have produced the bulk of 20th century warming.

Undoubtedly there has been some solar influence on the current warming, but the evidence seems to clearly point to an increased greenhouse effect as the primary cause.

As a side note, carbon dioxide can and does result from the heating of Earth's Ocean's, but it seems disingenuous to take from this that carbon dioxide doesn't act as a greenhouse gas. It just means that CO2 acts as a feedback as well as a forcing.

Answer 8

That has little to no effect on the ongoing problem of climate change. You say that the reason that the oceans are releasing so much CO2 ,is because they are getting warmer.  What do you think is causing the oceans to warm up?  When the oceans give off excess CO2, that's called a "negative feedback loop". Global warming is really caused by humans burning fossil fuels! All the so called arguments denying the facts,are just grasping at straws,and even making up their own hypothesis to try to disprove the theory of climate change. They don't care what they say,as long as they can claim that oil use is not the cause. As long as people can be confused or fooled by junk science,they can keep the truth from being understood. What needs to happen now is for all of us to find creative ways to save our butts!

Answer 9

Denial....

Great to see someone actually research objectively.

I have found that Climate Change is a more appropriate name.

We are only in Global Warming during the Warming cycle, then we enter the Global Cooling scare during the Cooling cycle etc...etc....

There is an article that supports your thoughts on the solar effects. There is also a very good story on volcanos on the ocean floor.

The climate change is earths natural warming and cooling cycles. We came out of a cooling cycle a couple hundred years ago. We will be starting a cooling cycle sometime in the future. THESE CHANGES ARE NOT DRASTIC by the way.

These are some new headlines currently in the news:

Russian Scientist says A Cold Spell is coming. R.A.N.S. shows that a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012, but real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or longer.

Researchers from the Oregon State University (OSU) Hatfield Marine Science Center are hoping to learn more about how the sea floor volcanoes and earthquakes contribute to the breakup of ice in the Antarctic region.

Global Warming Impact on Hurricanes might be Less than Earlier Thought a new study suggests says NOAA.

If scientists can't even agree on what has happened in the past, imagine how much more difficult it is to figure out the future.

It amazes me that so many people still believe that we are the cause of the Earth's climate changing (How arrogant of them).

Economically we are wasting our resources trying to convince the world that a natural warming cycle is caused by man.

Environmentalists generally only care about the environment for political gain and money.

Anyone who really cares about the environment and nature are generally known as conservationists.

Just relax and accept that we need to conserve energy and protect the environment. Leave the rest to God.

Answer 10

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2...

"The sun is another source of natural global temperature variability.  Figure 3, based on an analysis of satellite measurements by Richard Willson, shows that 2007 is at the minimum of the current 10-11 year solar cycle. Another analysis of the satellite data (not illustrated here), by Judith Lean, has the 2007 solar irradiance minimum slightly lower than the two prior minima in the satellite era. The differences between the two analyses are a result primarily of the lack of accurate absolute calibrations and inadequate overlap of measurements by successive satellites."

http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2007/07...

DENIAL MYTH #11: Cosmic rays (very high energy particles) striking the Earth’s atmosphere is the cause of global heating (Source: distillation of multiple people’s claims at Wikipedia.org).

Debunking: According to this theory, cosmic rays are responsible for cloud cover - fewer cosmic rays means fewer clouds and less cooling in the summer (clouds reflect the energy) and more heating in the winter (as clouds hold heat in). Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any statistically significant trend in the number of cosmic rays hitting the Earth, and the few experiments performed to date appear to be stricken with error or a failure to address key points. This could be an aggravating factor, but is highly unlikely to be the primary source of global heating. (Sources: No Link Between Cosmic Rays and Global Warming, Cosmic Rays and Global Warming, Recent Warming but No Trend In Galactic Cosmic Rays)

Your sources (for the CO2 ocean theory) are... ?  

There's no question that Co2 increases are caused by human activities. Here's an account of the overall net flows, both positive and negative:

Carbon Dioxide Budget of the Biosphere

http://www.ccas.ru/tarko/co2_e.htm...

Calculations show that the CO2 flows balance of in the world in 1995 was as follows.

Industrial releases - 6.41 Gt C/ year,

Deforestation - 1.08 Gt C/ year,

Soil erosion - 0.91 Gt C/ year,

Absorption by terrestrial ecosystems - 4.05 Gt C/ year,

Absorption by ocean - 1.05 Gt C/ year,

Remains in atmosphere - 3.30 Gt C/ year.

In the natural carbon cycle the ocean CO2 emissions are offset by absorbtion elsewhere, so there's no net growth, no matter what the size of the normal ocean contribution may be.  

Human contribitions on the other hand are net increases per year.  The rate of growth of human emissions is also growing as countries "develop".

This article explains how natural vs. man-made contributions to Co2 levels can be traced through chemical analysis:

CO2 Pollution and Global Warming

When does carbon dioxide become a pollutant?

http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/e...

The bottom line: the earth was able to absorb some of our Co2 production, but industrial releases alone would have to be cut by more than half to bring the balance close to neutral. Apparently virtually no one is discussing cuts sufficient to curb global warming.

'Unexpected growth' in CO2 found

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/natur...

BBCNews.com, Oct. 23, 2007

Excerpts:

Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere have risen 35% faster than expected since 2000, says a study.

About half of emissions from human activity are absorbed by natural "sinks" but the efficiency of these sinks has fallen, the study suggests.

The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), was carried out by the Global Carbon Project, the University of East Anglia, UK, and the British Antarctic Survey.

It found that improvements in the carbon intensity of the global economy have stalled since 2000, leading to an unexpected jump in atmospheric CO2.

"In addition to the growth of global population and wealth, we now know that significant contributions to the growth of atmospheric CO2 arise from the slow-down of natural sinks and the halt to improvements in the carbon intensity of wealth production," said the study's lead author, Dr Pep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project.

"The decline in global sink efficiency suggests that stabilisation of atmospheric CO2 is even more difficult to achieve than previously thought," said report co-author Dr Corinne Le Quere of the British Antarctic Survey.

A misleading comment "Humans contribute approximately 3.4 percent of annual CO2 levels" has been attributed to the National Center for Policy Analysis, which has received $465,900 from ExxonMobil since 1998.

http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfact...

Look at the wording carefully. If we contribute 3.4% more each year, after 10 years the increase would be at least 34%, and in 30 years CO2 levels would double. Yes, we have a problem.

What other indications do we have that the carbon cycle is significant?  Consider that the Bush Administration is notoriously skeptical in public about mankind's role in current global warming, but here are summaries of some of their latest research into carbon cycle science and what to do to mitigate the damage, which is being conducted across more than a dozen federal agencies:

http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sa...

http://co2conference.org/agenda.asp

Why would George Bush be performing carbon mitigation research if the problem didn't exist?  He may be disingenuous (and a lot of people may fall for his delaying tactics), but he's not misinformed and he's not stupid.  If the oil industry had contradictory science, Bush would have it, and several hundred federal scientists would be doing something other than developing carbon mitigation strategies.

EDIT -

Note which side resorts to an ad hominem attack ("arrogant")...  not confident enough in their own "science"?  The distraction attempt is disingenuous.  It's not arrogant to measure mercury in our air and in our tuna, why would it be arrogant to measure and recognize damaging atmospheric changes as well?  

There should be some valid skeptical science out there.  It's just hard to find through the industry shills.  What are the odds that not a single scientist draws conclusions that are too aggressive?  Identifying those weak spots in the theory only strengthen the model going forward, not disprove it as the skeptics so misleadingly imply.