Study finds global warming over past 4 centuries was due to increased solar activity

A peer-reviewed paper published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics finds global warming over the 20th century “not significantly different” from warming episodes that occurred in earlier centuries. The paper finds that the increase in solar activity over the past 400 years explains the warming, without any need to search for a unique cause of late 20th century warming, such as greenhouse gas concentrations. The NIPCC website just posted this summary of the paper:

Here’s the rest of the post: Study finds global warming over past 4 centuries was due to increased solar activity

The paper is not behind a payway, so click the link above to get the link to the PDF. Given that papers of this sort have a much higher bar to pass than alarmist supporting papers I’m going to assume that it’s pretty solid. Conclusive? Who knows. A pretty good piece of research, yes.

A slightly variable sun causes warming of the surface and atmosphere which causes airstreams and currents which are affected by the physical location and shape of the landmasses and the Earth’s rotation, day night cycles, and a few other things. Somewhere CO2/methane might have something to do with it, but that’s looking less likely as time goes on.

One of the issues with the Global Warming concept is the lack of explanation for prior warm periods, warmer than the current period, when CO2 could not have been the driver. And if it was then we should be seeing seriously warmer temps today. We’re not.

Additionally, there is the lack of explanation for why the planet didn’t burn up in past ages when CO2 was far higher than today’s measly concentration. In fact, life flourished back then. If the CO2 concerns were real then we’d be seeing significantly higher, to much higher, temps today and at least some of the hysterical remarks would be coming true. At little bit, anyway.

As it is, all of them can by put into the “The End is Near” bin of failed religious cult predictions. 100% fail rate. If we need to mend our ways then the accusing side should have some credibility, I think. So far, they have none.

As far as I’m concerned, the sooner we got off the “CO2 is bad” kick, the better.

New Paper: Warming Power of CO2 and H2O: Correlations with Temperature Changes

From WUWT:

Author: Paulo Cesar Soares

ABSTRACT

The dramatic and threatening environmental changes announced for the next decades are the result of models whose main drive factor of climatic changes is the increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Although taken as a premise, the hypothesis does not have verifiable consistence. The comparison of temperature changes and CO2 changes in the atmosphere is made for a large diversity of conditions, with the same data used to model climate changes. Correlation of historical series of data is the main approach. CO2 changes are closely related to temperature.

Warmer seasons or triennial phases are followed by an atmosphere that is rich in CO2, reflecting the gas solving or exsolving from water, and not photosynthesis activity. Interannual correlations between the variables are good. A weak dominance of temperature changes precedence, relative to CO2 changes, indicate that the main effect is the CO2 increase in the atmosphere due to temperature rising. Decreasing temperature is not followed by CO2 decrease, which indicates a different route for the CO2 capture by the oceans, not by gas re-absorption. Monthly changes have no correspondence as would be expected if the warming was an important absorption-radiation effect of the CO2 increase.

The anthropogenic wasting of fossil fuel CO2 to the atmosphere shows no relation with the temperature changes even in an annual basis. The absence of immediate relation between CO2 and temperature is evidence that rising its mix ratio in the atmosphere will not imply more absorption and time residence of energy over the Earth surface. This is explained because band absorption is nearly all done with historic CO2 values. Unlike CO2, water vapor in the atmosphere is rising in tune with temperature changes, even in a monthly scale. The rising energy absorption of vapor is reducing the outcoming long wave radiation window and amplifying warming regionally and in a different way around the globe.

Here’s the rest, including a link to the full paper: New paper – “absence of correlation between temperature changes … and CO2″

And a comment that I thought was really interesting, given all the reliance on correlation (which is still a necessary starting point:)

Anything is possible says:

January 1, 2011 at 10:40 am

If you extend back to 1958, the co-efficient of correlation between CO2 and HadCRUt global temperatures is 0.907.

How significant is that?

Well put it this way : The co-efficient of correlation between the number of Home Runs hit in MLB and HadCRUt global temperatures over the same time period is 0.885.

Make of that what you will!