Guest Opinion/Commentary*

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Why not the Sun
  Global Warming piece by Guest: Dennis T. Avery

CHURCHVILLE, VA - Why do global warming researchers ignore the sun, the ultimate source of earth’s heat? Especially as we know virtually all of our warming occurred before 1940 while 85 percent of the human-emitted CO2 came after 1940? Dennis Bray of Germany’s Institute for Coastal Research just polled an international group of climate researchers on what they believe and why. In light of the recent leaked documents from East Angelia University’s Climate Research Unit, the poll seems to provide important answers.

  * The researchers don’t seem to be trying to find holes in the current scientific “consensus” on climate change. They lean, instead, to “confirmation research,” explaining why their colleagues must be right.

  * They tend to have strong personal concerns about the environment where they live, and the weather they’ve lived through. Most have at least 15 years research experience, mainly tracking global warming, but not necessarily man-made warming. Most were probably invested in the warming ‘consensus’ when the current cooling came along.

  * They tend to consider themselves environmental activists, trying directly to “save the planet.” Researchers swimming against the current earn opposition from their colleagues and are being shut out of currently respected journals.

  * They seem to have a near-psychotic belief in computer models. As an economist, I was long ago forced to give up any belief in “macroeconomic” computer models. All economics is the sum of the microeconomics.

  * They admit the failure of their computer consensus to model clouds and cloud impacts on the environment. This point is crucial, because the counter-theory to man-made warming is the solar-cloud theory.

The solar-cloud theory holds that changes in the sun’s activity produce changes in the earth’s cloud cover. Remember, the sunspot index has a very strong 79 percent correlation with our thermometer record over the past 160 years. The CO2 correlation with our temperatures is a meager 22 percent.

Henrik Svensmark of the Danish Space Research Institute has demonstrated that when the sun’s magnetic field is weak, the earth is hit by more cosmic rays - and the planet gets more of the low, wet clouds that deflect heat back into space.

The UN’s Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change won’t listen. They say the sun’s total solar irradiance doesn’t change enough to account for the recent global warming surge. But the data show the clouds amplifying the changes in irradiance by roughly four-fold.

Only 25 percent of Bray’s respondents thought the models could adequately model cloud impacts. Yet 46 percent thought the models could accurately predict global temperatures over the next 10 years.

History supports the cloud impact. Analyzing Thousands of old museum paintings, the summer skies in the Medieval Warming tended to be sunny; the summer skies of the Little Ice Age paintings were cloudy, and the skies of the Modern Warming canvases have been sunny again.

Why do scientists resist the obvious likelihood that the sun would be involved in a planet-wide warming?  First, it wouldn’t be exciting. Second, it wouldn’t bring in government grants for research.

Two-thirds of Bray’s scientists agreed evidence from paleoclimatology (ice cores, pollen, etc.) is important to solving the puzzle - but they’re ignoring hundreds of studies showing a moderate, solar-linked 1,500-year cycle that goes back a million years.

I hate to imply that these highly trained academics are merely human, but the evidence seems to speak for itself.

DENNIS T. AVERY, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, is an environmental economist.  He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421

Dennis T. Avery

Sources:

Dennis Bray, 2008, A Survey of the Perspectives of Climate Scientists Concerning Climate Science and Climate Change, Institute for Coastal Research, Geestacht, Germany.

Solar magnetic wind theory: Henrik Svensmark, “While the Sun Sleeps,” Jyllands-Posten (Denmark’s leading newspaper), 9 Sept., 2009.

Hans Neuberger, 1970, “Climate in Art,” Weather, Vol. 25, pp. 46-56.

Posted by Guest: Dennis T. Avery on 12/13/09

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