Posted by: "Bob Foster" 
Fri Sep 7, 2007 11:25 pm (PST)
(from Yahoo ClimateSceptics group)

I was at university during the last decade of the 50 year struggle
between Hutton/Lyell uniformitarianism and Wegener’s hypothesis. The
geological establishment fought like tigers to keep out the new paradigm
of continental drift. Led by USGS, their principal argument was that
there was no demonstrated mechanism to explain drifting continents.
Thus, this hypothesis was based entirely on observation - and compelling
correlations. Anyway, the new science of geophysics blew
uniformitarianism out of the water – and no-one supports it now.

It is a bit the same with climate. Herschel (now close to Darwin under
the floor of Westminster Abbey – but with a much more fulsome text on
his stone) and many others hypothesized a variable sun-climate
connection. All this changed when the Lord Kelvin, President of the
Royal Society, announced in 1892 that he had done the calculations, and
was forced to conclude that the seeming correlation between events on
the Sun and events on Earth could be nothing more than “mere
coincidence”. There is much more in Soon and Yaskell.

As you know, the Royal Society has not yet resiled from that implausible
dogma. As recently as 10 April 2007, the Society issued a substantial
release immodestly headed “Man made climate change: the real science”
and sub-headed “CLIMATE CHANGE controversies – a simple guide”. I
surmise that it was largely written by Sir John Houghton.

It uses the ‘straw man’ debating technique, saying “… the Society – as
the UK’s national academy of science – responds here to six arguments
that are currently in circulation by setting out, in simple terms, where
the weight of scientific evidence lies.” By far the most important
‘straw man’ is:

“Argument 4: It’s all to do with the Sun – for example, there is a
strong link between increased temperatures on Earth with the number of
sunspots on the Sun.”

A swingeing demolition follows; and I here quote it only in (small)
part:
“While there is evidence of a link between solar activity and some of
the warming in the early 20th century, measurements from satellites show
that there has been very little change in underlying solar activity in
the last 30 years – there even is evidence of a detectable decline – and
so this cannot account for the recent rises we have seen in global
temperatures.”

The Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1976/7 – the last shift from PDO cool
phase to warm phase (reversing the shift to cool phase in the early
1940s) has been overlooked. The 76/7 Shift was an inertial event of
huge magnitude; and upwelling quantity of cold water in the equatorial
eastern Pacific reduced – roughly – from 26 to 18 Sverdrups. These
events correlate with reversal in the rate-of-change of length-of-day.
These PDO and LOD reversals correlate with reversals in the sense of the torque the giant planets combine to apply to the Sun – and hence kinks in the radius of the Sun’s orbit around the centre of mass of the solar system. Ian Wilson expects all these things to happen again in 2008.

While the Society/Met Office/IPCC ignore inertial (and resonant)
influences, they are not the main difference between the competing
hypotheses of a self-contained and people-driven climate VS an
externally-driven climate. By ‘external’, I mean the main driver is
extra-terrestrial.

The Great and the Good do allow a minuscule external warming
contribution via total solar irradiance (TSI). AR4 says that since
1750, radiative forcing from CO2 and CH4 have increased by some 1.66 and
0.48 Watts/sq m respectively – compared to only 0.12 W/m2 from TSI. The
Sun is almost irrelevant.

It appears likely that the main difference is here. Most of the
variation in the transport of energy in the outer reaches of the Sun and
beyond is by convection associated with the bulk turbulent motion of gas
– not by radiation. TSI varies only by fractions of a percent; but the
eruptive outflow of magnetised plasma can vary by orders of magnitude.
At timescales from hours to millennia it seems much more plausible tha the solar wind – and not TSI – is the principal vehicle for causing
variability in the quantity of solar energy reaching Earth. Piers
Corbyn might not quarrel with that.

I here quote Usoskin, Solanki and Korte 2006, “Solar activity
reconstructed over the past 7000 years: The influence of geomagnetic
field changes”, GRL 33, GL025921. Their study ‘”… allows the fraction
of time to be estimated that the Sun spends in grand minima of activity.
… about 6% or 430 years after 5000 BC with 320 of these years occurring
during the last millennium.” For grand maxima, “hyper-active episodes
(similar to the modern episode) remain very rare … being between about
1% and 3% of all the time during the last 7000 years.

Another relevant quote is from Lockwood, Stamper and Wild 1999, “A
doubling of the Sun’s coronal magnetic field during the past 100 years”,
Nature 399, pp.437-9. Their abstract begins:
“The solar wind is an extended ionized gas of very high electrical
conductivity and therefore drags some magnetic flux out of the Sun to
fill the heliosphere with a weak interplanetary magnetic field.
Magnetic reconnection – the merging of oppositely directed magnetic
fields – between the interplanetary magnetic field and the Earth’s
magnetic field allows energy from the solar wind to enter the near-earth
environment. … Here we show that measurements of the near-Earth
interplanetary magnetic field reveal that the total magnetic flux
leaving the Sun has risen by a factor of 1.4 since 1964; surrogate
measurements of the interplanetary magnetic field indicate that the
increase since 1901 has been a factor of 2.3 …” 
Their records end with 1996; and the peak year for solar magnetic flux
was 1992.

Now back to the Party Line. On 10 August, six authors from the Hadley
Centre issued a prediction with a short enough term for its veracity to
be tested while many of us are still alive. Doug M. Smith et al 2007,
“Improved surface temperature prediction for the coming decade from a
global climate model”, Science 317, pp. 796-9. Their abstract ends:
“… climate will continue to warm, with at least half of the years after
2009 predicted to exceed the warmest year currently on record.”

Now that stark and unqualified prediction is out, it seems pointless to
continue fighting the minutiae of the establishment position on
people-driven climate. Much better to make sure that all rational
persons know what has been said. Theodor Landscheidt, Ian Wilson, David
Archibald et al envisage the start of cooling during the next decade.
Thus, within a decade we will know if people or the Sun is principal
driver of Earth’s climate. This is a good reason not to impoverish the
world just yet in order to “fight climate change”.