Congress Hears From Muzzled Scientists

BendingSpoons writes "More than 120 scientists across seven federal agencies have been pressured to remove the phrases 'global warming' and 'climate change' from various documents. The documents include press releases and, more importantly, communications with Congress. Evidence of this sort of political interference has been largely anecdotal to date, but is now detailed in a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held hearings on this issue Tuesday; the hearing began by Committee members, including most Republicans, stating that global warming is happening and greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are largely to blame. The OGR hearings presage a landmark moment in climate change research: the release of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC report, drafted by 1,250 scientists and reviewed by an additional 2,500 scientists, is expected to state that 'there is a 90% chance humans are responsible for climate change' — up from the 2001 report's 66% chance. It probably won't make for comfortable bedtime reading; 'The future is bleak', said scientists."

Comments

Is this the U-turn?

[Nuffsaid]

This moment could be remebered as "The day the biggest CO2 producer nation in the world acknowledged a reality it ignored for years". Let's hope it's not too late to prevent irreversible runaway effects. For what it's worth, one day or another I'd like to hear some contrite words from people who stubbornly denied the need for any action about Global Warming up to now. A bit late, a bit useless, but should be an obligation for someone who may have contributed to bring the world beyond a point of no return.

Re:IF you are so worries about global warming

[pipatron]

That's not a good solution. The only long term solution is to stop breeding like you're a frikkin sha^Wbunny.

(not "you" as in you, but you know, in general. *sigh* Engrish is a great language.)

Please explain Republican attitudes toward this

[sdo1]

This isn't a judgement... more of a curiosity. I don't understand why "conservative Republicans" are so determined to deny that global warming is happening. It's fairly pervasive, or at least seems to to me. I can't tell if it's just people towing the party line and that line comes from the top, or if there's some aspect of religious doctrination that forces this attitude, or something else.

Case in point, I have relatives who are conservatives. I can't say all of them say this, but I'm surprised at the numbers who believe that global warming is a bunch of bull. I was listening to an NPR Technology podcast about this and a guy called in, identified himself as a conservative Republican, and proceded to state that he didn't believe global warming was happening.

I don't get why the skeptisism is drawn by party lines. What am I missing? Is it as simple as the top Republican leadership protecting oil interests and everyone else just follows along, or is there a deeper, more historical context that I'm unaware of?

-S

Re:Please explain Republican attitudes toward this

[gnurfed]

From conversations I've had with "conservative republicans", I've mostly gotten variations of the following non-exhaustive list of answers:

• "(a) Al Gore believes in global warming. (b) Al Gore is a liberal. Thus global warming is a liberal conspiracy"
• "Today it's cold where I live, hence global warming is a fraud"
• "There's a non-zero chance that humanity isn't causing global warming, so we shouldn't worry"
• "I like warm weather, so I don't care"
• "Climatologists are just fishing for more grants, which they want to steal out of my pockets"
• "They can't predict the weather next week, so they sure as hell can't predict how it will be 50 years from now"
• "The Apocalypse will happen before, or is related to global warming, so everything is alright"

The scary thing is that most of the conservatives I know are otherwise quite science-literate and often accept the science communities consensus views. I'd say it's very healthy to be sceptical, but on this issue there's much more to it. Something I can't explain.

Re:Please explain Republican attitudes toward this

[Anonymous Coward]

It attempts to impose an aggressively progressive tax code on emissions, and consumption. If we don't like progressive taxes already, what makes you think that we'd like that sort of 'productivity punishment' applied to our country?

Progressive tax is a form of negative feedback. Used properly, this will optimize a system.

Light bulbs use it. Neural circuits (e.g. our brains) use it. Electric motors use it. IC engines in our cars use it. Computers use it. Rockets use it. But God forfend our taxes use it!

Re:Please explain Republican attitudes toward this

[kabocox]

* "(a) Al Gore believes in global warming. (b) Al Gore is a liberal. Thus global warming is a liberal conspiracy"
        * "Today it's cold where I live, hence global warming is a fraud"
        * "There's a non-zero chance that humanity isn't causing global warming, so we shouldn't worry"
        * "I like warm weather, so I don't care"
        * "Climatologists are just fishing for more grants, which they want to steal out of my pockets"
        * "They can't predict the weather next week, so they sure as hell can't predict how it will be 50 years from now"
        * "The Apocalypse will happen before, or is related to global warming, so everything is alright"


Is there anything wrong with holding those opinions to be true? I watched Al Gore's video expecting to see GW stuff. I found lots of ice melting, which I couldn't careless about. The video also presented that he'd have focused on this issue heavily. I had the impression that instead of a war on terror; we'd have had a war on carbon emmissions or something thing. The Climatologists fishing for more grants is the most/easiest to believe. I graduated highschool in 1996. At that time, it was a big undecided on global warming. Everything was atleast 50-100 years out though before we'd see any changes. Um, I'd have to see some local/national changes rather than the most inhabitable places on earth having their ice melt. That's not enough to get me or others to change things. I believe that we need 100-200 years of solid climate date before we use any of it for policy making. "They can't predict the weather next week, so they sure as hell can't predict how it will be 50 years from now" Um, this is an issue, but its also an issue that our climate scientist can't predict our climates either. Weather is different from climate, but if they can't predict it and prove that they've actually predicted it, then we won't use their models as a base for long term policy changes. "The Apocalypse will happen before, or is related to global warming, so everything is alright" I hate these people. My wife and inlaws are part of this crowd. I want science to help me live for ever or atleast 200-300 years. I certainly plan on living out another 50-70 years at my current standard of living. "I like warm weather, so I don't care" Um, I hate both warm weather and cold. Where I live we usually only get one day of snow a year. Or summers are hot and humid. I like living inside a climate controlled building over weather of any flavor.

"There's a non-zero chance that humanity isn't causing global warming, so we shouldn't worry" Um, I'd say we influence the environment, but we don't know enough at this time to use them to make any decision off of. "Today it's cold where I live, hence global warming is a fraud" It seemed to me that the mass of liberals in the north didn't start believing in GW until our 2-3 summers of record highs therefore GW exists and we need to social engineer the country so summer won't be over 100 on any given day. Rolls eyes at both crowds.

Re:Please explain Republican attitudes toward this

[stewbacca]

Great points. I agree with nearly every one of them.

For all the greenies out there:

Electric cars run on electricity, no? How is electricity produced? Oh yeah, by burning coal (for the most part). Please explain to me how millions of tons of black soot caused by burning coal to produce electricity to charge all the batteries is cleaner than cars burning gasoline with 95% emmissions-free standards? Until electricity is produced primarily by hydroelectric means or *gasp* nuclear power, we (the Eastern US in particular) electric cars will do more harm to the environment than gasoline powered cars.

The guy who predicted the worst hurricane on record for 2006 is a perfect example of the selective science behind the whole movement. When the stats don't support their theory, they conveniently leave them out.

Re:Please explain Republican attitudes toward this

[ThousandStars]

3.The alternatives are hardly tenable at this point:

a. Mass transport: Due to the size, shape, and demographic dispersion it is untenable for the majority of American metropolis'.

b. Buy everyone new electric cars. For one, manufacturing all those new cars just uses more energy and produces more emissions. So people proposing that are asinine at best.

[...etc...]

This is actually a relatively easy problem to solve, or at least improve, and many Republicans even agree with the solution: Pigou taxes. To explain simply, this means imposing a tax on gas or oil because the negative externality oil imposes in both environmental and foreign policy terms. When the price of something goes up, the consumption of it goes down; such a tax would certainly improve the situation WRT a-c, although d and e might require other solutions.

It's a fairly neat policy that requires no convoluted, mangled regulations; it could replace broken CAFE standards that drove people to SUVs in the first place; it also has the benefit of denying oil revenues to despotic regimes in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia.

Re:Please explain Republican attitudes toward this

[goldspider]

"First, protecting the environment isn't about making your money back. It's about having a habitable planet for our kids."

Fine, but somebody has to pay for it. Should I assume that's something "the Rich" should have to pony up for?

"Second, you ignore technological progress over time. Every year solar is getting more efficient."

Ignoring progress is bad. Assuming it is bad too. I've been told for years that viable, affordable solar energy was just a decade away. I'm still waiting. Once it's there, sign me up. Until then, most people don't have the $$$ to piss away on immature technology.

Re:Please explain Republican attitudes toward this

[khallow]

Never been to NYC, I guess. Millions of people every day use mass transit. A large percentage of city dwellers have no car. Every American metropolis has some mass trasport. As roads become too crowded they are forced to provide more mass transit for immediately practical purposes. Your argument is simply false.

Note that the original poster qualified his statement with "most metropolises". New York City is unusual for a US city in its density of buildings and population. I have no doubt that he already knew of NYC when he posted.

Electric cars have less parts and are less complex. On a large scale and as technology progresses we will use far less energy to produce them. Your argument ignores progress over time.

Both you and the prior poster have unsubstantiated opinions on this. I don't see a reason that an electric car has to be either simpler or more complex than one with an internal combustion engine. And given the add-ons like power windows, computers, etc, it's not clear to me that the two will be simple to compare in complexity or that the difference between electric and gas powered is a significant difference in complexity compared to all the other stuff that gets put on a car.

See China. Not everyone needs to bike or walk, but easily half of the population can as they live in dense areas. You assume this argument is black and white. But if just the SUV drivers in metropolitan areas switched to bikes we'd have less traffic and save a lot of energy.

There are a lot of areas where it is black and white. In a pretty dense environment like NYC, public transportation makes sense and road travel does not due to the cost of finding a place to park. A spread out city like Sacramento, CA, for example, just doesn't have competitive public transportation and bikes are risky in the urban areas. Nothing beats the car there. There is a lot more population living in cities like Sacramento than NYC.

First, protecting the environment isn't about making your money back. It's about having a habitable planet for our kids. Second, you ignore technological progress over time. Every year solar is getting more efficient.

We have other goals than just "protecting the environment". Ending poverty, quality of life, progress come to mind. I see a lot of modern environmentalism undermining these other goals rather than supporting them. And the economic viability of a plan is relevant since economically inefficient plans take more resources from elsewhere and weaken our ability to accomplish these other goals.

Outside of a full-blown nuclear war, there will be a habitable planet for our kids. Global warming isn't moving that fast and no other global threat is that significant. I don't see any nearby tipping points either. Methyl clathrate deposits on the continental shelves, the most substantial bogeyman, have around an extra 100 meters of water on them from the end of the last ice age. The extra pressure from that will counter a lot of temperature increase IMHO before they become unstable and release methane into the atmosphere.

Your point about solar power increasing in efficiency is important. We have both solar cells that are getting very efficient at absorbing solar energy and solar cells that take relatively little energy to produce per KW of generating power. I still see some presence for fossil fuels in electricity generation for a while due to the need for stable power around the clock (energy/electricity storage isn't very good), but that can be replaced easily with nuclear power. But long term it won't make sense to burn fossil fuels for energy or transportation even if global warming turns out to be a minor issue.

By your logic we shouldn't have telephones because it's a lot of work to put up the wires. And we shouldn't have electricity because the up-front cost to build the initial generators is so high. All of your points are narrow. They ignore the big picture, ignore some very important details, assume everything i

Re:Please explain Republican attitudes toward this

[Oligonicella]

3a - NYC is not similar to the bulk of US cities. Kansas City, for instance is about fifty miles north and south. If NYC would relinqish their strangle hold on mass transit dollars, maybe others could catch up. As it is, the rest of the US supports AMTrack, which is a failure.

3b - No they do not have less parts and are less complex. It's just a different tech. Your argument ignores the currency of the situation and it's enormous energy cost.

3c - You ignore the distances again (see K.C.). And, I guess your attitude is screw the folks who cannot physically do that, eh?

3d - Ibid. Until that breakthrough, solar, wind and tide don't cut the mustard in either cost or product.

3e - Then the uberGreens ought to shut their mouths about them instead of organizing resistance?

The joke is...

[TransEurope]

that it's primary irrelevenat that humans are responsible for
global warming or not. Even when not, the politicians have to do something.
The reactions may be different in the two cases, but something has to be done do be
prepared. But have you ever heard that a politician said "hey, it's not us,
but we have to cut down CO2-emissions, reduce the pollution and restructure
the coasts to prevent the biggest desasters in the future"?

What the fuck is wrong with this administration?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Representative Jim Cooper, the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, http://thinkprogress.org/2007/01/30/negroponte-glo bal-warming/ was banned from mentioning the words "global" and warming" together in the same sentence. So in a recent speech he gave when he was given an environmental award, he played a game to try and get the words as close together in his sentences without actually saying them in the same sentence. Funny on one level, but how sad. We're approaching environmental crush depth and the administration is still pulling this pathetic little game about "climate change not global warming".

Frankly, I'm starting to agree with those who are talking about an environmental Nuremberg.

Re:Second Try: Three Points

[pubjames]

Gov: So Mr Climate scientist, what have you come up with?

Climate scientist: Well, my experiments show that the climate is changing, partly due to rising CO2 levels caused by pollution caused by humans.

Gov: What! We pay you to research the climate, not come up with political propoganda!

Climate scientist: Its not political, it's what my studies show.

Gov: It can't be, it doesn't fit our political agenda. We give you money to come to the conclusions we want, not your personal and unrelated suppositions. Research something else!

Climate scientist: I'm a climate scientist... Climate change and the causes of it - that's what I research.

Gov: Well, stop it! Do some research that supports what we already believe!

Re:Climatologists?

[ccarson]

Here are some facts about global warming. Some of which you hear and don't hear from the main stream media:

1.) The world appears to be getting warmer with many computer models showing an increase in global temperature.
2.) Tying a trend to warmer temperatures based on older data from the early 1900's is suspect at best. Good, reliable, accurate scientific equipment that measures the temperature wasn't readily available until recently (late 1900's).
3.) Apparently, the Earth magnetic field has decreased by 10% in the last 150 years (source: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/earth_magnet ic_031212.html). I'm an electrical engineer and during my studies in particle physics, I learned that a particles velocity can be affected by magnetic fields. I believe it's possible that more of the Sun's radiation is penetrating the Earth's magnetosphere ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetosphere ) due to it being weaker. If more radiation hits the Earth, shouldn't that also increase the overall temperature of the Earth and can global warming be attributed to this?
4.) Jupitor is experiencing the same climate change that Earth is. (source: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060504_red_j r.html [space.com])
5.) Mars is experiencing the same climate change that Earth is. (source: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ mars_snow_011206-1.html and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/new s/news.html?in_article_id=410901&in_page_id=1770)


How can you explain the recent same climate changes on different planets? I doubt it's all those cars being driven there. 6.) The United Nations found that there is more Methane produced from livestock, which raises global temperature greater than CO2 by a factor of approx. 20, than any human caused CO2 combined (source: http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/i ndex.html)


Is it possible that the warmer temperatures that Earth is experiencing are caused by cyclical natural phenomena? What about glaciers in Greenland that have been shrinking for 100 years (source: http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/08/21/060821191 826.o0mynclv.html [breitbart.com])? Also, how do you explain huge ice ages on Earth? Were thse caused by huge carbon emissions or was it a small natural climate cycle that just happens? Were those climate changes, which are no doubt more extreme than what's going on now, caused by the combustion engine? I don't have answers and everyone seems to have an opinion including a Nobel laureate who says the answer is more pollution (source: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/11/16/smog.wa rming.ap/index.html)

One last thing. Lets say we all buy into the fact that we're causing the climate change through CO2. Regardless of what actions we (America) take, China will still produce more CO2 than anyone because they want to get rich. There's no stopping it folks.

Re:SKY IS FALLING SKY IS FALLING

[udderly]

You have touched upon the main problem with getting anything done with this problem. Most people simply refuse to be inconvenienced to the point that is probably necessary to affect it. We all bitch and moan that the gov't isn't doing enough (and they aren't), but we continue to to drive alone to work in our large autos, turn our thermostats to 75 degrees in the winter instead of putting on a sweater, never walk, never ride a bicycle, etc.

Consider people like Al Gore (who admittedly has done a lot to get the word out), who owns a 10Kft^2 and a 4Kft^2 home while lecturing the rest of us. On the other hand, people who try to act consistently with their professed beliefs, like actor Ed Begley, Jr. are considered such freaks that they're making a TV show about his life.

This problem will not be solved by gov't intervention as much as by people changing their attitudes.

Re:Politics = Terrorism

[Anonymous Coward]

What is government? Government is the organization holding the special "right" to employ coercion as their business model over a given territory. (Any other group or person who does so -- without the blessing of government -- is a criminal.) That is the ONLY objective, universal, unambiguous definition of government. It applies to all past, present, and future governments, no matter what type.

What is politics, then? Politics is the process of dividing up that special "right", which only government holds, among the power elite. It is the system which determines who gets to hold that "right" and to what extent, and who doesn't. Again, that is the ONLY objective way to answer the question. (Any politician will tell you that politics is the process of "choosing leaders", "improving the nation", "organizing society" or the like, but those are subjective answers and therefore void.)

Terrorism, like any real crime (an actual violation of natural human rights, as opposed to crimes against the state), is founded on the principle of coercion. Government, as I have already made clear, is also founded on the principle of coercion. So let's get to your question: is politics akin to terrorism?

If you want an objective answer, I'd have to go with "yes".

Re:What Happens if it is all SOLAR

[Anonymous Coward]

Um.. According to a Dr. Ian Clark, professor of earth sciences at the University of Ottawa. There is no geological connection between co2 and climate change in the record. He points out that 440 million years ago when co2 levels were 10 times todays the earth was in an iceage. At other times high co2 coincided with warmer periods. Going further he states that the geo record shows that there is no correlation between co2 and the climate changes earth has seen. The Antartic ice record shows that the present warming trend of the last 800 years began before the co2 levels started to rise.

The questions I have is how many of the so called acivist scientists actually have a background in the climate sciences? How many of those getting in the news are actually scientists at all. I have one more question. Why have we not seen presented by the man caused warming mongers, with the full geological record to correlate their claimed data in order support their claims?

I believe the planet maybe warming slightly. Some 0.6c at the present on average. It might go further. But in the 1960's the earth had a cooling period where science perported over 10 years, that the earth was slipping into an ice age due to particulate matter in the air. Sorry but I'm confused by the idea that suddenly the scientific community got smarter in the last 40+ years. I fail to find any collated data to indicate a trend in increased mental abilities in said group (always end with a joke..or is it?).

Run a NASA Climate Model on your laptop

[HoneyBeeSpace]

If you'd like to do some of the same experiments that these scientists do, the EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a GUI (OS X and Win). You can add CO2 or turn the sun down by a few percent all with a checkbox and a slider. Supercomputers and advanced FORTRAN programmers are no longer necessary to run your own GCM.

For example, our model shows increased snowfall on Greenland (a common skeptic retaliation). This does not mean global warming is not happening, but rather what was predicted: Warmer air can hold more moisture, so there is increased snowfall. The melting on the edges is occurring faster, so overall we have mass loss of the ice cap.

Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.

As a signatory to this statement

[mdsolar]

http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interfe rence/scientists-signon-statement.html Let me be the first to welcome our new congressional oversight overlords.
--
The future is NOT bleak, it's sunny: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Re:Hmm...

[CaptainZapp]

[...]and the government staying out of it until it becomes a national concern that cannot be dealt with.

Then it's too late, way too late! If it becomes a national concern depriving Americans of their god given right to wear t-shirts in winter and wool sweaters in summer you'll be looking back at Katrina as a tame, little storm of allmost romantic proportions.

I would imagine that you can be clumped into the group of people that think enacting environmental protection laws will curb global warming?

No. I hold it with the Economist (which can most certainly not be called a fear mongering newspaper who wants to see laws enacted left and right). They argued in a survey from September 7 about climate change that investing now into curbing green house gases is way cheaper then facing the consequences at a future time. I quote from the introductory article of the survey:

This survey will argue that although the science remains uncertain, the chances of serious consequences are high enough to make it worth spending the (not exorbitant) sums needed to try to mitigate climate change. It will suggest that, even though America, the world's biggest CO2 emitter, turned its back on the Kyoto protocol on global warming, the chances are that it will eventually take steps to control its emissions. And if America does, there is a reasonable prospect that the other big producers of CO2 will do the same. (the whole survey can be purchased as a PDF for $4.95 here)

Of course you can now accuse the Economist of an anti-American publication who desperately loathes the republican party. You would be wrong of course. But don't let facts stand in the way of your prejudice.

Re:Yes besause...

[N8F8]

Good point. Poor choice of words. I get frustrated with these congressional flamebaits. I still stand by my position. The science I've seen so far has been less than credulous, the science community in question has a bad track record, and I've personally been in university science courses where I've had to personally endure the poor scientific standards being taught in most universities. I've personally been degraded by professors for asking to see decent science to back up these claims. Its the same attitude I get whenever I try to speak to a religious person about the bible.

Re:Climatologists?

[AGMW]

The way I see it is more like this :-

1) The world appears to be getting warmer
Yes, I agree, it does.

2) What is causing it?
I see 3 options here :-
a) Humans
b) Something other than Humans
c) Something other than Humans AND Humans

3) Who will suffer if it all goes tits-up?
er, Humans, most definately.

4) Who should at least think about things we can do to stop it, or reverse it?
Well smart as they are, the fscking Dolphins aren't going to help are they! It would seem it's down to us then.

5) What can we do?
Well, apparently there's a lot of small scale things we can do, that don't really hurt us too much, such as trying to control our CO2 emissions. I'm not saying here that cars are the problem (I seem to recall reading that transport based CO2 emissions were responsible for 3% of the problem - however one might be able to quantify that! - and that cars were a small percentage of that, so if everyone stopped driving tomorrow it would actually have little or no effect!), but curbing our enthusiasm isn't a bad idea.

6) Carbon Footprint
I've heard this so much in January, and hardly at all before. Your carbon footprint is all the things you do that release CO2 into the atmosphere (I think!). Driving, flying, heating your house, etc. The fact that no one seems to mention is that it is a Pyramid Scheme, and perhaps the Final Pyramid Scheme. If you have kids, they WILL have a carbon footprint of their own, and it should be tagged onto yours, as should their kids, and their kids, etc. Everyone on the planet is a consumer, and consumers ALL generate CO2. So, the question I'd like answered is this :-

How fast is the collective Carbon Footprint growing, just as a factor of the population growth, and can we actually reduce our own personal Carbon Footprint enough, for ever, to counteract that growth?

I've no idea about the first part of the question, but my guess is that the answer to the second half of the question is a big, fat, CO2 belching, NO.

We should be packing our bags and preparing to go elsewhere!

Global warming solution: Socialism

[Elwar123]

I'm not a Republican, but I would probably say that the reason Republicans don't want to believe in this whole global warming thing is because the solution put out by any global warming enthusiast/nut has been a step toward socialism/communism. You'll never once hear any of these global warming folks mention the fact that the government is our country's biggest polluter.

Re:Climatologists?

[HappySqurriel]

The University of Calgary, in association with the friends of science, after seeing years of unaudited research being used in politics to support the conclusion that "man-made global warming will destroy the world" produced a series of videos that have been posted on youtube ...

Climate Catastrophe: Cancelled
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
part 5

Now to get modded down for disagreeing with the majority ...
I'm betting I'll get over-rated today

RTFA

[mdsolar]

The passive voice is fine. The reports are clear on who is doing this and why. IMHO, you are setting up a strawman here.

Solar as an matter of fact: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Re:Climatologists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, the Earth magnetic field has decreased by 10% in the last 150 years...I believe it's possible that more of the Sun's radiation is penetrating the Earth's magnetosphere due to it being weaker. If more radiation hits the Earth, shouldn't that also increase the overall temperature of the Earth and can global warming be attributed to this?

Can global warming be attributed to this you ask? Well, it's a matter of sitting down and runnign the numbers. Luckily people have - it's not like people aren't bothering to measure and track the amount of solar radiation that actually reaches the surface of the earth. We can then calculate how much that might contribute to warming. The IPCC, in the Third Assessment Report, put it at about 30% of observed warming. They also concluded that the warming of the last 50 years cannot be explained without considering anthropogenic effects - that is, solar explanations alone are not enough.

If by 'solar radiation' you mean 'light', it is not deflected by the magnetic field of the Earth at all, since photons are neutral particles.

Perhaps the poster was attempting to allude to various hypotheses that have been put forward regarding solar influences on cosmic rays and cloud formation.

The idea is that gradual variations in the solar wind can influence the size, shape, and strength of the Earth's magnetosphere. This could influence the trajectories and flux of cosmic rays impinging on the upper atmosphere, which in turn may affect the rate of cloud formation.

Re:Is this a surprise to you, or are you just joki

[sponglish]

No, we haven't.

Take a look at this graph. There are two set of curves, one comparing the Mann hockey stick to curves showing sunspot activity. The other compares the Moberg 2005 curve to the same sunspot curves.

Here's what I find interesting:

- The Moberg curve (blue curve) follows the Antarctic curve (red) pretty closely, but it tracks almost exactly the same shape as the Greenland curve (green) when it sweeps up in a steep curve in the 20th century.

- The hockey stick curve (orange curve) doesn't do as good a job of tracking with the sunspot curves, in fact it looks like it averaged out the highs and lows (read "MWP" and "LIA") to come up with a relatively smooth shape, but even so, it's still a fair match to the sunspots, especially when it sweeps upward in the 20th Cent.

This can't be coincidental, can it? The obvious conclusion is that the global temps are heavily influenced by sunspot activity. If mankind's pouring of CO2 into the atmosphere was a major influence, the curves wouldn't track together so closely (i.e., the steep upswing would be much greater for the Moberg and Mann temp curves than the sunspots), but that's not the case.

FYI: The sunspot reconstructions I took from Usoskin's millennium-scale sunspot number reconstruction published in the November 2003 issue of Physical Review Letters. There's more current research that was just released, but I can't find the link I had to the PDF. The black GRL curve is from that more recent paper and you can see that it matches the others pretty well.

If the relationships I've drawn are correct, doesn't this strongly imply that the Sun is causing this warming trend?

If you don't think the sunspot curves match closely, it may help to see how poorly the various global temp curves match with each other. Take a look at this Wikipedia graphic combining the global temperature reconstructions from the major players. Looks pretty random to me. The only thing that's given them any credibility is that they all swoop up in the 20th century like they're heading for the moon. And so do the Greenland and GRL sunspot number curves.

Based on that, take another look at the SN curves and then at this one where the curves are overlaid on the Wikipedia graphic.

I'd say the SN curves track better with the global temp reconstructions than many of the wilder global temp curves do. Yet all those curves have been cited by "warmists" as being equally valid (because of that lovely swoop!).

Yup, it's the Sun causing the warming!

Re:Is this a surprise to you, or are you just joki

[Ambitwistor]

Take a look at this graph. [...] The major problem with solar forcing enthusiasts is that they ignore the fact that the variations in solar output simply aren't large enough in magnitude to account for the observed recent warming trend.

Bias of the UCS

[bonch]

It should be noted in the interest of full disclosure (since the media doesn't report these things when it's an issue they're on board with) that the Union for Concerned Scientists is known as a left-leaning group and is funded by various liberal organizations.