Sun Not a Significant Driver of Climate Change

damn_registrars writes "Scientists from Edinburgh, Scotland have recently published a study based on 1,000 years of climate data. They have compared the effects of differing factors including volcanic activity, solar activity, and greenhouse gases to find which has the most profound effect on climate. They have concluded that the driving factor since 1900 has been greenhouse gases."

Comments

What about the Little Ice Age?

[Anonymous Coward]

c. 1350-1850 A.D. Increased volcanic activity was noted but is only one of several (possibly compounding) possible factors.

Besides, changes in solar activity levels may have a delayed impact via ice melt, changes in atmospheric circulation, etc.

Re:What about the Little Ice Age?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Difference Between “Significant” and “Not Significant” is not
Itself Statistically Significant
Andrew GELMAN and Hal STERN

It is common to summarize statistical comparisons by declarations
of statistical significance or nonsignificance. Here we discuss
one problem with such declarations, namely that changes in
statistical significance are often not themselves statistically significant.
By this, we are not merely making the commonplace
observation that any particular threshold is arbitrary—for example,
only a small change is required to move an estimate from
a 5.1% significance level to 4.9%, thus moving it into statistical
significance. Rather, we are pointing out that even large changes
in significance levels can correspond to small, nonsignificant
changes in the underlying quantities.

http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/signif4.pdf

Re:And what was the driving factor before 1900?

[thepainguy]

And the Medieval Warm Period...? And do you honestly believe that the sun is a totally static object that hasn't changed over time?

Re:And what was the driving factor before 1900?

[LynnwoodRooster]

But how does that explain the pretty big swings in temperature from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age? A few hundred years separate the two.

Re:110,000 year major glaciation Sun cycle

[Anti Cheat]

Don't get me started on volcanoes. Even up to 5 years ago, many in the climate science said that volcanoes play no significant role in the present climate changes. This year they finally began to retract that belief, based on actually beginning to look at the data..

Re:Way to state the obvious

[Jane Q. Public]

"What is left is the rise in carbon and other GHGs we are filling our thin gas envelope with."

There are LOTS of things "left". In fact there are so many variables, creating so much "noise", than any "signal" from AGW has been extremely difficult to detect (and indeed, might not even exist).

The Exxon argument is a straw-man. We know that burning fuel adds heat to the environment completely aside from any "GHG" forcing. One is not evidence of the other.

Re:Way to state the obvious

[DrJimbo]

Neither one of the fine articles linked to in the summary mention radiative forcing. Neither do either of the two references you cite as proofs that radiative forcing has been debunked. The Wikipedia describes radiative forcing as:

In climate science, radiative forcing is defined as the difference of radiant energy received by the earth and energy radiated back to space.

There is no mention of it being refuted (or even controversial); not in the Wikipedia article and not in the two references you cited. In fact, since radiative forcing is a rather simple definition it is hard to imagine how it could be refutable.

Furthermore, this reference of yours, despite having pretty pictures, seems to be based on utter nonsense with the main point being:

Internal [actual greenhouse] temperature cannot exceed maximum strength of solar heating input.

This is utter nonsense because it makes a direct comparison between heat and temperature. It would be helpful if the article mentioned what the temperature limit of the strength of solar heating was. But if they did that, the utter nonsense would be apparent because the temperature of a solar furnace can be many thousands of degrees (either Celsius or Fahrenheit) so if there is limiting temperature, it must be so high as to be meaningless in discussions of global warming.

Another way to see it is that if you can trap solar energy in a box that has perfect insulation (energy comes in but it does not go out) then the temperature of the box will rise without limit. Of course there is no such thing as a perfect insulator so there are limits to how high a temperature you can achieve but these limits are not a direct property of the solar radiation. There is a temperature limit, of a sort, to solar radiation but the limit is the temperature of the surface of the Sun, which again has no bearing on discussion of global warming.

Re:Way to state the obvious

[haruchai]

You have some catching up to do. Because there are not sufficent permanent temp stations in the Arctic, the amount of warming seen there has been seriously underestimated.
Rapid Arctic warming is one of the features of global warming / climate change and it should have struck the doubters as very strange that the most staggering decrease in the volume of Arctic ice was occurring during a period where there was SUPPOSEDLY no warming.

And, it's always been grossly inaccurate to say "no warming for 17 yrs" as temps have been slowly rising in places where there are adequate numbers of stations.

The correct statement is "no statistically significant warming". That is NOT the same as saying "no warming" or "we're in a cooling period".

Re:Grasping at Straws

[angel'o'sphere]

I'm sitting right now in Karlsruhe, germany. The temperature according to the yahoo weather app is 13 degrees centigrade. (Yahoo is usually wrong, that means weather is a bit better and a bit warmer actually, but I'm to lazy to dig up an accurate number, as it is not important). Just for future reference if this gets digged out by climate researchers or idiots like you in a few hundret years: today is 24th of december, the year is 2013 (christian time). I repeat he fucking temperature outside is +13 degrees centigrade.
For you morons who don't get it to the slightest: TODAY IS CHRISTMAS! What do you think why every christmas story on the world involves snow? Snowy regions, coldness and snow, snow ... more snow, snow storms, blizzards and sledges? Ha? What do you think, why that is so? BECAUSE europe is supposed to be covered with snow, from north italy, north spain over france and germany and poland into siberia in the east up to the north pole. With only exceptions being parts of ireland, island and wales and perhaps england. It is supposed to be covered in snow like it always was around christmas, except for the last 20 - 30 years.
HOWEVER: there is no snow! It is fucking 13 degrees to warm for it. It is supposed to have something like -10 degrees here, going down at nights to -15 to -20. But it is not. It was not happening to be that cold since 25 or more years.
With the raw exception of a winter where it actually is a little bit below zero. And then all scream: seeeeee! It is cold! There is no global warming!
I repeat in case you did not get it: right now northern europe should be under a snow cover ... according to the climate of 30, 50 or 100 years ago. But it is, depending on your region: 13, 20 or MORE degrees (centigrade) to warm!
(And yes, there are plenty of negative effects for not freezing, like having a mosquito plague every summer)

Re:Way to state the obvious

[haruchai]

After Willard Watts' Junior Woodchucks went around identifying good and bad stations, researchers used the "good" stations to derive the temps and got almost exactly the same results - indicating that the correction factors that's been used for decades by the USHCN are reliable.

Re:Yet tiresome denialism will still reign supreme

[Bartles]

Mann's hockey stick was created with adjusted data. The unadjusted data looks entirely different. There was nothing actual about it.