What is wrong with this graph?

Question

Certain climate change skeptics continue to use it, even though it stops in 1985. Why?

http://www.research.noaa.gov/spotlite/archive/images/sunclimate_3b.gif

Here is the rebuttal to it...

http://www.realclimate.org/damon&laut_2004.pdf

Answer 1

Bob nailed it once again.  Here's a few other data points.

Two (read them both to understand how quotes are often misused by doubters) quotes from Sami Solanki (Max Planck Institute):

"the Sun is in a state of unusually high activity, for about the last 60 years."

"the significant increase in the Earth’s temperature since 1980 is indeed to be ascribed to the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide."  

Quote from "Solar influence on climate during the past millennium" (from the National Academies of Sciences journal, 6-Mar-2007):

"The potential role of solar variations in modulating recent climate has been debated for many decades and recent papers suggest that solar forcing may be less than previously believed."

Quote from "Variations in solar luminosity and their effect on the Earth's climate" (from Nature 14-Sep-2006):

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

Answer 2

Your rebuttal seems a bit dated as well.

Answer 3

Well the 'rebuttal' says that the solar cycle length does not corrolate with Micheal Mann's hockey stick graph.  The reason for that is the 'rebuttal' was written in 2004 back when many people considered the hockey stick to be serious science (even though it was just one study that nobody has been able to duplicate).

Answer 4

Oh, yes, the old slight-of-hand trick. Pay no attention to the solar cycle/temperature correlation for 100 years. Just look at this little five year window right here. No! No! Right HERE, damit!

Oh, and don't bring up the fact that the Maunder Minimum correlates with this and CO2 forcing doesn't. That wouldn't be fair!

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Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. Damon-Laut focusses on four data points of the plot in question. In reality, only the final two data points differ significantly from the original, projected Friis-Christensen/Lassen data. There is no quarrel with the other 21 data points which do appear to be in "strikingly  good agreement" with the Northern hemisphere land temperatures. My complaint is not with Damon-Laut. It is, instead, with those who have thrown out the baby with the bath water by ignoring 90% of the data and the fidelity with which it apparently tracks temperatures.

Answer 5

Apparently, nothing is wrong with the graph because the "rebuttal" is for some other graph.

Answer 6

stop posting junk science from the "Hockey Team" found at political websites like realclimate.

Answer 7

First, they acknowledge the previous results except for the last few years.  I don't have anyway of knowing which to accept.  I am highly skeptical of that artical since it states that the latest temperature increase is certainly anthropogenic, yet we are supposed to believe that the previous increases weren't.  It isn't like we started CO2 emissions in 1950s.  I am skeptical of both.  Clearly we don't know as much about the climate as many try to claim.  My biggest beef is with those that think they understand it and are sure humans have caused harmful warming.

Answer 8

It doesn't continue though 2007 like this one does, released yesterday:

GISS 2007 Temperature Analysis

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

"The Southern Oscillation and the solar cycle have significant effects on year-to-year global temperature change. Because both of these natural effects were in their cool phases in 2007, the unusual warmth of 2007 is all the more notable. It is apparent that there is no letup in the steep global warming trend of the past 30 years.  

'Global warming stopped in 1998' has become a recent mantra of those who wish to deny the reality of human-caused global warming. The continued rapid increase of the five-year running mean temperature exposes this assertion as nonsense."

Answer 9

The argument from Dr. T is nonsense.  It's the "skeptics" who want to cherry pick data.

The fact is that graph completely diverges after 1985.  The solar cycle goes DOWN, while temperature goes UP.

Here's the nail in the coffin of that theory:

"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 admits it:

"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...

BEN O - The hockey stick has been replicated many times.  Using more rigorous statistical methods just puts a few ripples in it.  It doesn't change the conclusion.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Ima...