The sun is the driver. For warmists and Skeptics alike how does this new study impact your opinion?

david_b: <The Washington Times does studies now?> Right out of the box you greenies start your standard criticism without reading the chart. It was acquired from data from Bezerkley.

Joe at least you sound more credible but nice try your bias is showing?

You are so vapid and predictable. What, was that on the top of your put down chart this morning or did Hansen phone it in to you?

That certainly looks closer to tracking than CO2 level.

Look at the difference between the two charts. Sun activity on the GISS flat lines and goes down whereas the Berkeley goes up from 1980 onward. If they are using the same data or methods of measurement, someone is cooking the books. Sun activity should be easy to measure. It should not be debatable. I bet Hansen makes Bezerkely correct its data.

Yes, of course the sun influences the temperature of the planet and drives climate. This is well know by scientist. Sun spot cycles are a know natural factor that is accounted for in the estimates, but even including sunspots, the current rise we observe in temperature cannot be explained without including the addition of CO2 in the atmosphere that results from human activity.

See figure 4 and read.

http://dels-old.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/climate_ch...

If the solar radiation is the absolute best predictor of temperature and other factors are minor, why are night time temperature so high on the chart? On the moon (on which the sun drives temperature), night time temperature are about a couple of hundred degrees cooler than day time temps. Isn't the moon the same distance from the sun? Shouldn't the temperature of the moon and temperature of the earth be about the same if the sun is the only important factor? I'm so confused!!!

http://diviner.ucla.edu/

This is for scientists to decide, not for the public and your question shows exactly why.

You have taken a single report and decided the data looks 'irrefutable'. Why do you believe the data is irrefutable? Have you tried to replicate the data? Do you know what the source of the data was? Do you know the analytical techniques that were used? Are the scientists who published the data well-known in the community or are they newcomers with no previous publications in the area?

As I constantly say on these boards, it is foolish for people like myself and virtually everyone else on yahoo to attempt to validate science. We are not qualified to do so and your belief that the data is irrefutable is hardly a scientific assessment. Let the scientists do their job. Let THEM assess the research. Let THEM draw the conclusions. That's what we've trained and educated the scientists to do.

Asking what I or most people think about a scientific paper or article on climatology is like asking what an accountant thinks about the use of composite materials in aerospace technology - completely pointless because we're not qualified, educated, or knowledgeable to make such assessments.

First, this is not a study. Moreover, this subject matter has all been discussed deeply in the science journals previously, most importantly in 2009 when Henrik Svensmark admitted that all of his work showed that solar activity did not correlate with global temperatures UNLESS warming from other sources was assumed at a linear rate of 0.14 degrees per decade. Based on UAH data, that is 100% of global warming in the satellite record. Svensmark found a correlation that explained annual variance but does not explain that rapid linear rate.

Now Willie Soon uses very sloppy work to attack a highly respected statistician, blur radiance with activity in a purposeful attempt to mislead the reader, and refutes a staw-man, and some people think it is great. Seriously, read the article and see if you can tell whether Soon is claiming sun spots are driving climate, or radiation. These are different things. Why does he blur them?

Perhaps most importantly, of course the sun affects climate. Duh! The question at hand is whether CO2 is permanently increasing the greenhouse effect. It is. Does solar deviations cause climate deviations? Duh!

Keep in mind that global warming has been more pronounced at night than during days. Neither cycles of solar activity nor radiance can explain that.

Willy Soon knows he is blurring radiance with sun spots. He knows he is ignoring the robust statistical analysis within BEST. He knows other research shows more warming at night. He knows the enhanced greenhouse effect is directly measured. These are not mistakes on his part, this is a blatant attempt to mislead you. Why does he write this in a blog on the Moonies' newspaper (Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church). Why is it that he can't even write in a secular newspaper? More importantly, why does he not write in a science journal? That's easy, a science journal would never accept such crap. He wrote in a blog in the Moonies' newspaper because that is where his writing is not edited for accuracy and where he can reach rather stupid people who do not or cannot think critically about what he wrote.

You've been duped, and not even by a good fraudster.

You say the data is irrefutable, and it is at least credible as it is coming from a variety of sources and processed by a credible team at BEST. But look beyond the data at the conclusions that are drawn. They are not supported by the data. That's where your lack of critical thinking allowed you to be so easily duped. It is very poor and immoral work that would not be allowed in any reputable publication, much less in a science journal where the real debates happen. It is slop. Read it again critically.

First off this is a commentary piece in the opinion section.

Secondly one of the authors is Will Soon, who has personally received over 1 million dollars fro big oil to spew his GW denier BS. You need to differentiate between science (real science) and opinion pieces, blogs, personal websites and stand alone graphs which are worthless without the accompanying text.

You denier are continually grasping at straws. This is a waste of your time and everyone else's if you are posting this type of useless articles.

If you can't provide published peer reviewed science by a real climatologist, you will not be able to prove any point you make.

As a denier, you deny the truth. You can't change the fact that climate change is real, it is happening now, and will continue to be real.

You can't change the fact that 95% of all climatologists are convinced that climate change is caused by humans, or that the majority of the worlds climate organizations are in agreement.

It's not a 'Study', it's an opinion piece, and few real climate scientists take Willie Soon Seriously.

Ask why this is using US temperatures, not global ones. Even so, where does the so called cooling in the past 15 year show up? Try to be consistent.

The Irradiance numbers are volatile depending on what satellite data is used after 1979, so it looks like cherry picking. Another graph is linked

EDIT @ Ottawa Mike, see links 2&3,4. It's not that simple, but in general, there is a slight decrease in TSI.

"Looking at the empirical data (from a newspaper) it appears to be irrefutable to me." Really?

Then please explain why the earth is currently warming while the energy it receives from the sun is actually down?

And in other news, both the Northern passage and the Northern gateway are open today.

What study?

All I see is an opinion piece by Willie Soon (industry's darling with more then $ 1,000,000 in funding since 2001 (1)) and a Heartland Institute related statistical consultant who cannot even properly read a simple graph (2)

<<Looking at the empirical data...>>

Exactly what 'empirical data' are you talking about? Surely not the graph I hope as it is bleeding obvious it is based on cherry-picked data from BEST and Soon/Briggs put a nice sounding title above it? Home-made graphs printed in opinion pieces can by no stretch of the English language be considered 'empirical data', much less 'irrefutable empirical data'.

PS The contiguous US accounts for roughly 2% of the entire globe.

Jeff, the lead on the article is Willie Soon. No one who knows anything about global warming will take him seriously. He was compromised many years ago - see Soon-Baliunas - for the same nonsense he is now writing with someone else in a newspaper. He's been busted repeatedly.

This is the same stupid nonsense that deniers have been coming out with for years and years. It means nothing, and will soon be refuted, based on every previous bit of climate "work" Willie Soon has ever done.

Now, go ahead and play like I'm saying the sun does nothing. You know you want to. Because everyone knows the initial heat source is the sun - D'oh! So you can pretend to misunderstand and say I think the sun isn't hot.

But if you really want to push this crap, try to find someone with at least a shred of reputation and dignity left. Soon has neither.

Thank you for the link to this so-obviously unbiased report aimed at "fanatics". That gives us a way to solve the global-warming problem. All we have to do is turn off the Sun.

Have you ever heard the expression "the straw that broke the camel's back"? There are things we can't control and things that we can. Some people choose to control the latter. Others wring their hands over the former while sitting on their fat butts, doing nothing constructive.

At face value, an article like that doesn't really change anything for me. But I do wish it was more than just well known skeptics who are looking at this sort of work. To me, it looks like pro-AGW climate scientists have given up investigating the solar influences on climate simply claiming there are some but not enough, or as much, or as important, or a strong as CO2. As a matter of fact, they seem to have given (or at least have very little time for) any other climate driver like forestation or urbanization. That's why this quote near the end of that article seems pertinent:

"Given the wide, and perhaps at times excessive, interest in tying carbon dioxide to climate, there has been relatively little work investigating the solar-climate connection."

And I see from some above answers that one of the denier tactics is to claim an ad hom against Willie Soon and thus they don't have to listen to anything he has to say, regardless of his credentials. He and his colleague Sallie Baliunas published a study in 2003 which largely contradicted the Mann 1998 hockey stick. And boy, did they come under attack for that all for simply showing there actually was an MWP and LIA. Just read the related Climategate emails. I think it got so bad that Baliunas now doesn't ever touch that sort of subject for fear of being bullied again. What a shame.

Edit: I forgot to include this interesting article: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-stars-potential-predi... Given how science operates, you would think that climate scientists would be studying this very carefully. My bet is that they are going to ignore it and keep their focus on CO2 since this is probably not a big enough story. And when something is big enough, like Soon and Baliunus (2003), the focus is on the authors and not the work. Again, what a shame. Science is going down the toilet. Well at least climate science.

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Edit@Al: Thanks for that link to skepticalscience.com as a good example of how to conduct cherry picking. The formula, pick data set A and then pick data set B from different set of instruments and methods and accuracy and stitch them together to get the graph you are looking for. Brilliant. Oh, did I mention that they guy who did that is cartoonist? Apparently the deniers around here think a cartoonist is smarter than an astrophysicist.