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In 1610 Galileo observed dark features on the face of the sun – sunspots. In the preface to a little book Galileo wrote on sunspots that was published in 1613, he was credited with having discovered sunspots but an Englishman, Thomas Harriott, and a Dutchman, Johann Fabricius, probably beat him to that discovery.

What we do know is that since the invention of the telescope, Europeans have been keenly observing sunspot activity and some have been correlating it with global temperatures.*

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) publishes the mean monthly sunspot number back to January 1749.

There were no sunspots during a period of unusual cold in the northern hemisphere known as the Maunder Minimum which extended some 70 years from 1645 to 1715.

Because the number of sunspots has shown a general trend of decline since March 2006 there has been much chatter amongst global warming skeptics with some suggesting that we are perhaps in for an extended period of cooling

Now there is more excitement, because August 2008 appears to be the first month since June 1913 without a sunspot.

[But perhaps I should wait until there is a zero recorded at the official NOAA site before announcing this?]

David H. Hathaway, Solar Physics Team Leader at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, has suggested that this solar cycle 24 is just taking a while to get started.

Habibullo I. Abdussamatov, head of the space research laboratory of the Russian Academies of Sciences’ Pulkovo Observatory and of the International Space Station’s Astrometry project, has predicted for some time that because of low solar activity we may be entering another period similar to the late 17th century and that this may start in 2012-2015 and reach its peak in 2055-2060.**

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* Why few sunspots could correlate with low tempertures by Richard Mackey:

“The Earth’s geomagnetic field provides a buffer against solar radiation, the solar wind and radiation of all types generated elsewhere in the Universe. The field’s strength depends on solar output and the lunisolar tides. A stronger geomagnetic field will deflect more cosmic radiation than a weaker one.

“A highly active Sun can make the geomagnetic field stronger; a relative inactive Sun will make it weaker. Other things being equal, a strong geomagnetic field contributes to a warmer climate; a weaker field to a cooler climate. But the effect may not be uniform across the planet. Currently, the geomagnetic field seems to be weakening, contributing to global cooling.

“The heliosphere, and the termination shock sphere within it, deflects cosmic radiation. The Earth’s geomagnetic field also deflects cosmic radiation. The strength of the heliosphere depends on the Sun’s activity levels. High levels of solar activity reduce the volume of cosmic rays entering the Earth’s atmosphere, contributing to global warming. High levels of solar activity generate more turbulence in the heliosphere scattering galactic cosmic rays before they reach the inner planets. Conversely, a greater volume of cosmic rays enter our atmosphere during times of low solar activity because the Heliospheric magnetic fields are smoother with less scattering of galactic cosmic rays, resulting in global cooling.”

(from ‘Much more to the Earth’s Climate than human activity’, Submission to the Garnaut Climate Change Review by Richard Mackey, February 2008)

** Lawrence Solomon profiled Dr Abdussamtov in a piece entitled Look to Mars for the truth on global warming, The Deniers — Part IX, Financial Post Published: Friday, February 02, 2007.

Published papers by Dr Abudssamotov predicting cooling include: ‘Optimal Prediction of the Peak of the Next 11-Year Activity Cycle and the Peaks of several Succeeding Cycles on the basis of Long-Term Variations in the Solar Radius or Solar Constant’, Kinematics and Physics of Celestial Bodies, 2007, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp 97-100, and ‘Long-Term variations of the Integral radiation Flux and Possible Temperature Changes in the Solar Core’, Kinematics and Physics of Celestial Bodies, Vol. 21, No. 6, pp. 328-332, 2005.

According to a recent paper** published in the journal Nature, only a dramatic fall in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are able to explain the transition from the mostly ice-free Greenland of three million years ago, to the ice-covered Greenland of today.

I am not convinced, but anyway, the paper begs the question, why did the purported elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations fall to levels similar to the pre-industrial era?

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** Late Pliocene Greenland glaciation controlled by a decline in atmospheric CO2 levels, Nature 454, 1102-1105 (28 August 2008), by Daniel J. Lunt, Gavin L. Foster, Alan M. Haywood and & Emma J. Stone.

Read the University of Bristol media release here.

In today’s UK Telegraph Christopher Booker has commented:

“As the estimated cost of measures proposed by politicians to ‘combat global warming’ soars ever higher – such as the International Energy Council’s $45 trillion – ‘fighting climate change’ has become the single most expensive item on the world’s political agenda.

“As Senators Obama and McCain vie with the leaders of the European Union to promise 50, 60, even 80 per cent cuts in ‘carbon emissions’, it is clear that to realise even half their imaginary targets would necessitate a dramatic change in how we all live, and a drastic reduction in living standards.

“All this makes it rather important to know just why our politicians have come to believe that global warming is the most serious challenge confronting mankind, and just how reliable is the evidence for the theory on which their policies are based…

Read more here.

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The ‘consensus’ on climate change is a catastrophe in itself
By Christopher Brooker, Telegraph.co.uk
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 31/08/2008

On the evening of Sunday, August 10, I asked for citations of research papers in reputable scientific journals that examine the causal link between anthropogenic carbon dioxide and global warming and that quantified the extent of this warming.** In most areas of science, when a clearly articulated theory dominates, a student can nominate several seminal papers that have influenced and directed thinking in that area.

Many people believe increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide lead to increases in temperature. This can be demonstrated in a laboratory, but when you scale up laboratory experiments to the real world, what happens? We know from ice cores that global temperatures have decreased in the past even as carbon dioxide has continued to rise. There are some so-called skeptics who claim that in the real world the radiation forcing of carbon dioxide is overwhelmed by the more powerful constraints of evaporation cooling from the tropical oceans.

I cross-posted my request for papers as a comment on John Quiggin’s blog as I was interested to see what those who follow the issue and generally subscribe to AWG theory would suggest by way of best papers. The next morning my request turned into a bet when Michael Duffy offered to put up $1,000.

By Monday evening the thread at Professor Quiggin’s blog had thrown up three papers that the commentators suggested potentially provided explanation of the causal link and a quantification of the extent of warming. Interestingly one of them was published as long ago as 1938 – perhaps it was a seminal paper.
The papers are:
1. Callendar, G.S., 1938. The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc., Vol 64, 223–237.
2. Hofmann, D.J., J. H. Butler, E. J . Dlugokencky, J . W. Elkins, K. Masarie, S. A. Montzka and P. Tans, 2006. The role of carbon dioxide in climate forcing from 1979 to 2004: Introduction of the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, Tellus B, Vol 58, 614-619.
3. Crowley, T. 2000. Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years. Science Vol 289: 270-277.

I have posted comment on two of the papers concluding they do not fit the criteria (part 2 and part 3 of this series of blog posts) and I understand that the author of one of the papers, Thomas Crowley, posted comment at John Quiggins site acknowledging that his paper did not deal with causation.

This is a key point acknowledged by Professor Quiggin in the thread at his blog, though he initially went as far as to claim that there are “hundreds of papers on both the causal link and the question of sensitivity” but could only cite a few papers which he suggested dealt with the issue of sensitivity later in that same thread.

While many scientists would claim you can’t deal with sensitivity if you haven’t established causality, this is attempted in climate science including by correlating output from computer models. Aynsley Kellow has explained this as a technique of post-normal science in his book, Science and Public Policy: The Virtuous Corruption of Virtual Environmental Science (Edward Elgar, 2007).

The 1938 paper by G.S. Callendar is the closest of the three to fitting the criteria in that it attempts to answer the types of questions that a scientist would need to consider if a credible link is to be established between anthropogenic carbon dioxide and warming in the real world. However, it is clear from the discussion section within the paper that Mr Callendar’s findings were not peer reviewed, and furthermore not accepted by his colleagues. Indeed, the following comments are included as part of the discussion within that paper which is presented as ‘a reading’ followed by discussion (pg 237): 1. the numerical results could not be used to give an indication of the order of magnitude of the effect of carbon dioxide, and 2. it is not clear how absorption energy by carbon dioxide is calculated. These are important points that the Callendar paper explains have not been properly examined.

There are of course the voluminous reports from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with their findings and theories on popular Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory. The content of these reports, endorsed by governments around the world, have been repeated over and over, for example, in the recent influential report by economist Ross Garnaut to the Australian government. It is apparent, however, that a body of science published in peer-review journals, establishing a causal link between anthropogenic carbon dioxide and warming and quantifying the extent of this warming, is lacking but would be expected to exist to support popular AGW theory.

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** I understand causality to be the relationship between cause and effect. American Environmental Scientists, S Marshall Adams, suggests seven causal criteria for evaluating the relationship between specific environmental stressors and observed effects: strength of association, consistency of association, specificity of association, time order of temporality, biological gradient, experimental evidence, and biological plausibility (Establishing causality between environmental stressors and effects on aquatic ecosystems. Human and ecological risk assessment. Feb 2003, 9, 1, pg. 17-35).

Part 1
Part 2 including comment on Hoffman et al.
Part 3 including comment on Crowley