The knuckledragger element of the warming skeptics group had it right, just for the wrong reasons. The sun matters.
What I learned from hanging around astrophysicist is the sun generates an output of radiative energy and heat that isn’t affected by the sunspots, so I could stop thinking of sunspots as flares, however, the sunspots cause electromagnetic interference with cosmic rays that generate clouds.
So, knowing Fred Singer, for example, helped me understand what makes for warm periods and cooling interspersed related to sun cyles.
Then William Gray splains how ocean circulations that are decades long makes for another confusing consideration. No matter–the paper referrenced here comes right after the Green Armstrong Soon paper on modeling.
The authors make the case that cooling is a real possibility, just like the very high flying discussion from one of our contributors a few days ago.
I introduced a very nice gentleman from Mexico a couple of years ago at one of the Heartland Climate meetings where I did host/moderator work–his speech was prepared in English, we did Q and A in Spanish–cool guy, who’s research in meteorology at some institute in Monterey led him to0 predict cooling into the next 20 years. He and the Russians and some others are going to make my water ski season shorter and the corn in Iowa shorter.
I live in Texas and got rid of my really serious winter stuff from being a yankee many years ago when I moved south to stay, but I can survive and adapt. I told you about my old horse Buster shivering on a windy wet day with the Temp 56 F. Cool is hard on people even in moderate clime cities–ever heard of chillblains and trench foot? Cool wet is hard on a body.
A recent study on Seattle death rates showed a winter death harvest that had no tail. Real deaths not just briefly premature deaths with a drop off tail like heat deaths. Everyone reading this should know that there is a more than 10% increase in deaths in the winter.
http://www.thegwpf.org/lawrence-solomon-global-cooling-consensus/
If you can get hold of “The Neglected Sun” (Amazon UK have it) – this book has much on such matters.
Man MPH, udaman–reminding us of soemething is not discussed enough. I can’t imagine that the big boys don’t put the pencil to the eliptical orbit thing, and of course we know about inverse of the square of the distance, don’t we, or something like that–I am in biology because math makes me brain overheat.
Thanks for your note, though. and I hope to get Fred Singer to comment, maybe Richard Lindzen and Willie Soon. I know all these fabulously smart guys. Lucky me.
And don’t forget the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit. It isn’t a constant, it IS constantly changing. This has an impact on the amount of solar energy hitting the planet. As the eccentricity moves closer to 1.0 (0.0 would = circular) Earth spends more time further from the sun than it would compared to a circular orbit (Keppler’s laws of planetary motion). I don’t know if anyone has bothered looking at what this would do to climate, but I do know that no article I’ve read on modeling the Earth’s climate has talked about the variability of solar energy hitting the planet as a result of variations in solar output and the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit. They always seem to assume that the energy input into the equation is a constant when it isn’t.
Me too. Extensive reading and research by this knuckledragger led me to believe that it is solar activity along with the PDO and AMO which are the main drivers of warming and cooling, with CO2 playing only a minimal part in warming.
Let’s hear it for the knuckledraggers, and I’m glad you’ve caught up with us Mr. Milloy. What took you so wrong?
you’re killing me , rich. incidentally I have a special place in my heart for all the vich guys on th planet–you put up with a hell of a lot of persecution.
So I was including myself in the knuckledragger group. Wadduino, I am just a grande biologist who get’s paid more than bioligists who teach biology.
All of us skeptics said–what the hell–carbon dioxide–it’s less than 0.04 percent of the air, how could it change the climate–look at the sun, it be big ball of terrible fire, make u burn in the summer, u wish it was around around in the winter.
We all said–well its the damn sun stupid. but in fact it’s the sun, but not the way we think it is. Rich, at the age of way past 60, I found out from Fred Singer’s book and from the man himself, that it was sunspot electromagnetic interference with cosmic rays that reduced clouds and caused warming. I was slapped down and reminded I AM A KNUCKLEDRAGGER. But I just happened to be on the right side of the argument, proof that sometimes being lucky is better than being smart.
John,
The sentence, “The knuckledragger element of the warming skeptics group had it right, just for the wrong reasons. The sun matters.”, leaves much to wonder about. I would like to know who qualifies as ‘knuckledragging’ climate skeptics in your view, and why?
Please expand!
Rich Kozlovich
Reblogged this on CraigM350.