Monday, November 08, 2010

Climate stupidity 4: Degrading the role of the Sun

A note on the so-called "thousands of IPCC scientists" who endorsed the AGW claims.

A total of 2,600+ scientists and climate modellers were involved in the writing of IPCC AR4 (4th assessment report). Divided to work on 3 working groups (WGs) -- physical science of AGW, Effects of AGW, and Adaptation to AGW.

So only about 900 scientists were involved in WG 1, the physical science of AGW.
Of this no., majority only submitted short papers and didnt bother if the lead writers considered or ignored their inputs. The lead writers are only several dozens, and some of them were caught in the famous "climategate" scandal where known warming scientists were caught to have manipulated climate data, ignored or destroyed data, that do not conform with AGW.

Here's one table in AR4, summarizing what contributed to the recent warming of the past century (1850s to 2005). Of the 8 factors they identified as contributing to the past century's warming, 7 are man-caused or anthropogenic. Only 1 natural factor was included, the Sun, and they gave a low value for solar forcing. Just click on this and the succeeding graphs to see their bigger images.

A commenter in my earlier posting below, "Climate stupidity, part 3" named "Cthulhu" argued that "The values assigned for solar forcing are based on physics so are only low because that's what the physics shows." See the rest of his points in the Comments section of that posting.

Wrong. An astrophysicist from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Dr. Willie Soon, gave this comparison of radiative forcing between the Sun and CO2. Too small impact by human CO2 emission compared to the forcing by the Sun. Units in watts per sq.m. (W/sm). That's what solar physics shows.

Dr. Willie Soon also showed this "coincidence" between solar activity as indicated by total solar irradiance (TSI) and Arctic temperature from 1860 to 2000. Compare that with "non-coincidence" between CO2 level in the atmosphere and Arctic temperature.

The lesson is clear: the Sun is the biggest driver of climate in planet Earth. There are other factors, both natural and anthropogenic, but they are minor compared to the Sun's influence.

A friend, Al Protacio, a Filipino geologist, commented:

Giving a low value for solar forcing is like saying the victim died because his heart stopped and then arogantly ignoring the fact that he was bitten by a very poisonous snake moments before he died. These so called scientists have the same level of intellect as the people who voted for Erap with the reasoning "We tried the brightest and most accomplished people as president but my living condition didn't imporve. Now let's try someone who's dumb as presdient. Things should change from bad to good." We all know what happened when Erap was president. Even the dumbest person in the world wouldn't drink poison in the hope that he will get well because the medicine he'd been drinking didn't work. These so called scientist may just actullay try the poison!!!

One analogy I can think of with respect to the contribution of the sun and greenhouse gases to global warming is cooking rice. What actually cooks the rice, the flame underneath the pot (i.e. the sun) or the cover of the pot (i.e. greenhouse gases)? {Pause for effect} {Pause again to give the intellectually challenged scientists the chance to contemplate on this question - they may be thinking "Is this a trick question?"} {Then answer with a very gentle voice and a serious face - try not to laugh even though you feel like dropping to the floor laughing} The cover of the pot helps in cooking the rice faster but the rice will never be cooked without the flame. The earth can have all the greenhouse gases but it will never get warm (or warmer)without the sun.


Other natural factors -- water vapor, volcanoes, about galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) from exploding stars in the universe, the oceans (PDO and AMO) -- were either treated as irrelevant or have little influence on the earth's climate by the IPCC.

And here's the scary scenarios given by the IPCC AR4. Global temperature rise of up to 4.0 C just 90 years from now, with "likely range" of up to 6.4 C! And sea level rise of up to 0.59 meter (about 2 feet) by the end of the century. Well, at least, this is less scary compared to Al Gore's fiction movie, "An inconvenient truth" where he projects a sea level rise of up to 20 feet just 90 years from now.

Facts do not conform with IPCC predictions. Projections, after all, are just guesses, not evidence. Actual global temperatures, say of the lower troposphere as measured by satellites, are evidences. This graph compares global tropospheric temperature from UAH and RSS satellite data, vs. CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Data is from http://friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=196

From January 2002 to October 2010, the temperature trend showed a warming of 0.03 C per decade, or 0.3 C per century. The average temperature was pulled up by the recent El Nino. When temperature data for November and December 2010 are to be included later, which shows drastic temperature drops, the projected temperature change will be zero if not negative.

Will continue this "climate stupidity" series in the coming weeks.

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