Peter Sinclair on Climate, Sun, and Cosmic Rays
Posted on 25 December 2011 by Rob Honeycutt
This week Peter Sinclair takes on skeptic notions that the sun is causing climate change. The video takes on The Great Global Warming Swindle showing where Durkin omits critical data that would lead to opposite conclusions than his movie's premiss. We get clips of the late Stephen Schneider in the interview conducted by Australia's Tony Jones. We also get a clear explanation from Jasper Kirkby at CERN that the recent results from the CLOUD experiment do not show anything that can be applied to current climate.
As always, Peter's videos are both entertaining and educational.
We are blessed with unusually mild (not so hot) December 2011 Down Under (SYD area) so Santa may feel releaved. Not so good news on the noth pole though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf4DpJys3Wo
mybe he should move to the south pole at least temporarily until people (majority of them Up Over) do sth about north pole situation...
This is a terrific summary, making the CR issue quite clear. But it's Jasper Kirkby, not Kirby.
caerbannog... That's very cool news. I wonder if Peter knows?
But only last week British denier journalist James Delingpole, who states he is “right about everything”, started one of his tirades with the words:
“Martin Durkin is a hero of mine, not just for his courage in making the first mainstream British TV programme seriously to challenge the idea of Man Made Global Warming – The Great Global Warming Swindle -----“.
Not only do you have to be right about everything Mr. Delingpole, but you also require some credibility.
He typifies the standard of journalism coming from the denier side.
If he didn't write cr@p, he'd be out of a job - its bit really his fault.
“James Delingpole is a writer, journalist and broadcaster --------“.
Modern journalism is becoming opinion where the facts are not necessarily important.
This is no way to communicate climate science (or anything else) to the public.
May you all have, along with my admiration,the very best of times in the coming season.
Dlingpole posts under "BLOGS HOME » NEWS » JAMES DELINGPOLE" which, is >Blogs then news, not the other way round.
As for his strap-line, as I said, it's designed to wind people up to sell advertising. I've no doubt he started as a journalist... births/weddings/deaths/lost dogs etc... which has stood him in good stead to provide very few column inches he manages from time-to-time.
Also, the site comments on this latest Climate, Sun, Cosmic Rays video has 2 useful links:
1.) An ArsTechnica article about climate and cosmic rays
2.)The actual recent paper by Purdue's Ernest Agee posted at Judith Curry's
Thanks for the link to the Agee et al 2011 paper, although I feel somewhat tarnished by having to go through Curry to read it.
Agee is very clear:
It is concluded that the observational results presented, showing several years of disconnect between GCRs and lower troposphere global cloudiness, add additional concern to the cosmic ray-cloud connection hypothesis. In fact, this has been done in the most dramatic way with the measurement of record high levels of GCRs during the deep, extended quiet period of cycle 23-24, which is accompanied by record low levels of lower troposphere global cloudiness.
Their Figure 2 (comparison of GCR flux with ISCCP low cloud amount) makes it clear where the excitement generated by the early papers proclaiming 'clouds correlate with GCRs' originated. There is indeed a slight reduction in cloud amount coincident with reduced GCR flux in 1990-91 and then an uptick in cloud amount as GCR flux increased through 1994. But from 1994 on, the cloud amount has decreased, while GCRs started a strong increase in 2004.
In short, the fuss over GCRs was generated by basing a conclusion on too short a dataset - and ignoring everything since. Note how often that behavior pops up among those who seek to push these fringe hypotheses.
Do not dismiss Delingpole as a fringe blogger. He writes books and does many interviews - even Prof. Paul Nurse interviewed him for his BBC documentary “Science under Attack”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SmPjVCfTgM (preview only)
which helped Delingpole’s profile and credibility.
Just as with climate change, there is the “accumulative effect” of misinformation.
Solar activity did not peak around 1940 and drop after that, but continued to climb until its highest recorded level in the late 1950’s, as you can se here. That is almost 20 years after the peak in temperature. When the temperature levelled out and dropped a bit, the solar activity was still increasing to its highest level seen for several hundred years. Solar activity lags temperature?
Did they use the wrong curve for solar activity to create a better match with the temperature before 1980, or am I just overly suspicious here?
I guess we know the answer to that…