Svensmark: "global warming stopped and a cooling is beginning" – "enjoy global warming while it lasts"

The main shifts in global air temperature trend seem to occur at approximately 25 to 30 years intervals when the oceans change phase. Even on shorter ENSO type interannual time scales we see a rapid and direct response in the air to ocean SST changes.
There is really not much correlation between observed climate changes and the progression of a single solar cycle which is surprising if the cosmic ray effect is at all significant.
There really doesn’t seem to be a shortage of particulates in the air in the first place.
I have difficulty with the Svensmark theory for those reasons but I am supportive of the idea generally. I just think that it is simply one of many modulating factors and not a primary driver.
I am open to persuasion on this issue and look forward to hearing the comments of others.

Please get it professionally translated. I think I just had a freshman flashback.

REPLY: If somebody has a source (and funds) to do this I welcome any better translations than Google. For now this will have to do. – A

In Japan the Democratic Party won a landslide victory at the general election on 30 August, and the to-be-prime-minister Yukio Hatoyama announced at a recent press conference that he wanted to aim at 25% curbing of CO2 emission by 2020 with respect to the level in 1990. This is quite embarassing to me, but I do now hope he just “wanted to aim” and not “promised to aim”, “by 2020” ant not during his prime ministership, and “if all the major emitting nations agree” (his words) which appears to be improbable for the moment……….

A very mysterious mechanism indeed. And still not supported by any observation. Moreover, how is it the sun is “fading” since the 90ies and all we got is a warming? Even 20 years later? 2009 is not going to be a cold year, far from that. August and July were globally pretty hot and September seems to be setting a new record
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/amsutemps.html
check Channel 5
REPLY: “And still not supported by any observation.”
Baloney “Flanagan”.
Svensmark cites Forbush decrease events in the op-ed piece and the results. Here’s an essay on it:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/04/a-link-between-the-sun-cosmic-rays-aerosols-and-liquid-water-clouds-appears-to-exist-on-a-global-scale/
and here
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2009/07/20/decreases-in-cosmic-rays-affect-athmosph
Why would you purposely misrepresent what Svensmark cites when an observation exists and was cited in the op-ed piece? There are times when I think maybe it is better that you take your opinions elsewhere, this is one of them.
Take a time out.
-A

If only the climate of earth were so simple that major changes depended just on one factor. Unfortunately this simplistic view is wrong, and our chaotic climate depends on multiple interlinked mechanisms to keep it within the bounds of a few degrees of temperature variability we usually see.
The Svensmark theory may well be correct, but like CO2 caused AGW, I’m sure it will not turn out to be the sole mechanism. However, with Copenhagen around trhe corner, it’s good to see some publicity which shows the CO2 theory is very weak and perhaps help stop global Cap & Trade being adopted.

What the Warmists forget (whether intentionally or not) is that this flatline of temperature (or even cooling) was not predicted by models. How could they predict it, because the models cannot be fed chaotics? Because of that, it shows that ANY future prediction, whether warming or cooling, is ridiculous. And I count-in this prediction of cooling. We CANNOT do that! Why has Svensmark not picked up anything from silly predictions of the Earth frying? We don’t know what the future climate will be, so what we SHOULD be doing is putting money into adaptation of whatever comes our way. It’s bizarre of some to think that we can warm the planet, but it’s equally bizarre to make predictions that we will be cooler too. A lack of sunspots may bring cooler temps, but maybe some other interaction will raise them – so they’ll be a balance. What it all means is that we don’t know, so why make our we do – either way? The econuts are too stupid to realise this, so let’s not follow their lead. We cannot predict next week’s weather with much certainty, certainly the Met Office here in England cannot get a 3-day forecast accurate over my town (I know because I’ve been monitoring it), so we should stop thinking that the Earth will warm or cool, and save money for whatever is thrown at us. Sooner or later we’re going to have to deal with a sizeable meteorite impact. Perhaps we should worry far more about that – with its effect on weather, climate, the money markets, food distribution, and disease & starvation.

Will they force Prof. Svensmark to leave Copenhagen at “Copenhagen” ?
He could meet Mitchell Taylor and Ian Plimer in Copenhagen (Louisiana) at that time.

“Barry Foster (01:03:31) :
What the Warmists forget (whether intentionally or not) is that this flatline of temperature (or even cooling) was not predicted by models. ”
Curious, this is not what I have been told, I have always understood that natural variability can cause temporary decreases in temperature. I guess we have different sources. Perhaps you could produce a quote that states what you have said this clearly?

dorlomin (01:13:20) :
“Barry Foster (01:03:31) :
What the Warmists forget (whether intentionally or not) is that this flatline of temperature (or even cooling) was not predicted by models. ”
Curious, this is not what I have been told, I have always understood that natural variability can cause temporary decreases in temperature. I guess we have different sources. Perhaps you could produce a quote that states what you have said this clearly?
————————————-
You want him to produce a quote of what he just said? Doesn’t make a lot of sense. Can you produce a model that matches observations? A hypothesis that matches facts? Those are reasonable requests.
Also the underlying logic of your statement actually matches the statement by B.Foster, ie. that there is an underlying monotic trend of warming through CO2 – your point presumably being that we are just experiencing a “temporary blip” and that normal (warming) service will be resumed at some to be determined date in the future.

“WUWT & Flanagan: Take a time out.”
Yes, the big C (Cryosphere) is on everybody’s mind and gets some people in a foul mood. In a few week we will look back and smile, citing Henry Miller (Quiet Days in Clichy): “It was a period when C was in the air.”

Folks,
all this science is OK, but I’m afraid it’s irrelevant. One can’t defeat a paranoid religion with logic and common sense. Or argument.
The AGW is ideologically driven and politically executed religion of the green/left alliance. Unfortunately the ignorant public has a mob mentality,
the loudest megaphone wins.
Call me pessimist, I can’t see how civilisation (western) can get out of this 🙁

“UK Sceptic (01:05:16) :
If we are sliding into another LIA then is it possible we’ll see governments paying industry to pump out as much CO2 as it can?”
CO2 levels are already higher than the worst case scenario that the ensemble of models put forth. There is no need to add extra CO2. It obviously has little effect.
John M Reynolds

The other global warming effect:
UK ‘could face blackouts by 2016’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8249540.stm
Or possibly whiteouts?

i am 69 years old (a good year) I was born in New Zealand and had my 21st birthday in Antwerp Belgium, (studying petroleum engineering). In 1963 I flew from Europe to NZ, (4 days, now 24 hours). I have worked all my life in the Petroleum Industry, and if a Country has oil I have been there, you never find oil on main street, it’s always in the back of beyond, which gives me a different outlook than 90% of the other people. Weather (not climate) is one of the greatest of our worlds wonders. IT’S LOCAL !
I was in Stavanger Norway and on the tow of the Shell Brent Delta to the Brent field in the Northern North Sea, Shell spent millions and years on weather research before designing these platforms, as the zone has some of the most treacherous seas in the world. The water gap ( the distance from high tide calm water to the underside of the platform ) was designed for the 100 year wave. In the first winter the 100 year wave hit 84 times.
In Siberia winds of 152 km an hour and temp. of -47°C arrived with such precision that we used to run a sweep stake.
”Lightning never strikes twice”, but the top of the oil derrick in the jungle of Sarawak was hit 8 times in 30 minutes.
On an ex whaling mother ship converted into a drill ship (48,000 tonnes) off the coast of Indonesia in a tropical storm with 8 anchors out and in a ‘’storm mode” we where dragged 4 miles off location.
On a jack-up drilling rig on tow from Singapore to Sri Lanka with 2 tugs we went backwards for 24 hours.
In the desert of Saudi Arabia in 1996 with temp. in the mid 30’s C we went down to 18°C and 10 inches of hail in about half an hour.
Now we get politicians (failed lawyers) offering mega $ for research to ”prove” that us humans are in charge of the climate, if these 25-39 IQ ”humans” went and experienced the world, (not visiting the local Hilton) and realized how big our planet is and how small the human presence is we would not be trying to get milk from butterflies.

Personally, I would love to see Svensmark be correct and that AGW is not a concern because then we can rest knowing that there is, for the most part, nothing we can do about it.

I don’t quite understand why Professor Svensmark says it looks like the Sun is going into a Grand Minimum like in the Little Ice Age. Since the Mediaeval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age lasted around 500 years each, isn’t it reasonable to expect the present warm period to last 500 years as well? I expect there were minor variations in temperature during these periods similar to what we’ve seen in the last hundred years, so wouldn’t the most likely explanation of the current temperature drop be that we’ve entered a thirty-year period like the fifties and sixties followed by a return to the temperatures of the nineties and so on? Or have I missed something?

Just recovered from passing out whilst reading the following on the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8249668.stm
Including: “Twice as many people now agree that “claims that human activities are changing the climate are exaggerated”.
Four in 10 believe that many leading experts still question the evidence. One in five are “hard-line sceptics”.
And: Half of the people surveyed believed the media was too alarmist.
Now it’s that last paragraph I particularly like – MSM really, really doesn’t like the thought of losing its audience…
Cheers
Mark.

Stephen Wilde (23:48:17) :
There is really not much correlation between observed climate changes and the progression of a single solar cycle which is surprising if the cosmic ray effect is at all significant.
It is NOT correlated, it is associated. There is no 1 on 1. What Henrik is describing is the cosmic food chain. It starts, for our purposes, at the galactic level, proceeds then to the Solar System level, and then to the Terrestrial level.
When the Sun goes quiet, we here on Earth experience more of the effects of Galactic influence, which is never quite totally overriden by the Sun. The patch cord does not end at the Sun.
The IPCC’s man-centered universe is as backwards as the Dark Ages, feeding on ignorance and fear of the place we live.
Someday, we will be able to predict both the climate and the solar cycles, but not if the IPCC manages to control science first.
As for the top of the food chain, we are still at it discovering the makdeup, diversity and structure of the Galaxy our solar system careens through.

Leif Svalgaard (04:01:53) :
(1) The cosmic ray intensity has shown no trend since accurate measurements began in the early 1950s
Put your hand over the left side of that graph and cover up everything prior to 1990 and look again. Ask yourself a question: Where have you seen that slope recently?

“On June 3, 1999, the European Space Agency announced that the Sun’s magnetic field is getting progressively stronger. Thanks to the unprecedented overview of solar magnetism provided by the ESA-NASA spacecraft Ulysses, a team at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford has been able to work out the recent history of the Sun’s magnetic behavior. According to calculations by British scientists, the strength of the Sun’s magnetic field has doubled during the Twentieth Century alone. This finding may help to clarify the Sun’s contribution to climate change on Earth. The hydrogen → helium fusion model does not explain this phenomenon.”
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2009/arch09/090909polarity.htm

Tony B: See figure 1
http://www.sciencebits.com/CosmicRaysClimate

I get tired of people saying that since solar activity “peaked” in the 1990’s and yet temperatures peaked later than that then solar activity can’t be a major factor on influencing the climate. First, as many here have said, no one is saying that solar activity is the ONLY driver of climate – only that its effect has been understated (and as a result the guesstimate of CO2 effect has been overstated). Other key factors that must be considered in trying in interpret temperature changes over the last 30 years include changes to oceanic temperature phases (PDO, AMO) and the major volcanic events such as El Chichon and Pinatubo. The other key thing to keep in mind is that climatic reaction to solar activity is not instantaneous due to the thermal inertia of the oceans. What is interesting is that if you look at cosmic ray activity from a cumulative perspective factoring in intensity changes and DURATION of these changes, it is clear that there is a strong correlation between the direction of global temperature change and solar activity (as inversely related to cosmic ray activity). The following plot shows the cumulative differential between the point-in-time cosmic ray activity at Oulu and the average over the displayed time period.
http://www.geocities.com/mcmgk/Cumulative_CR_Inverse.jpg
What is clear from this plot is that an in increase in temperature from 1960’s to the 2000’s is very evidently correlated with the cumulative inverse of cosmic ray activity, noting the temperate peak that we might have otherwise seen in the early 1990’s was wiped out by the Pinatubo event. Given that, one would expect that temperatures (other than the 1998 super El Nino) would have peaked in the 2000’s (which they have done) and would now be dropping off (which they are doing). Once the current El Nino fades, expect temperatures to continue their drop!

Nick Yates (04:45:09) :
If only WUWT could get Henrik Svensmark to discuss this here with Dr Svalgaard. It would be so interesting.
I could not agree more.

I.ve slowly become a convinced denier of AGW. I think Flanagan must definitely be allowed to stay on… he’s our best argument

Mick (01:46:48) :
I have wondered why the greenie’s leaders, mostly the toffs here (not forgetting the US’s imported toffs), are so much in bed with the socialists. It seems a strange alliance.

There’s a general polarity opposites, between the group and the individual. When thinking about problems, people can be biased against one or the other. Some people believe poverty is the result of an unfair system, so they want to reform the group’s institutions, to make the world more fair. Sometimes people believe poverty is the result of the individual’s lack of character and fortitude, lack of ambition, lack of ethics, and so they want to change the group’s institutions to become more about rewards for success and punishment for failure.
Where the greens are allied with the socialists is in their common belief that the system is bad, the system is unfair, the system is allowing greedy individuals to harm the environment, and exploit fellow man. So they are in favor of tighter regulation, and they are in favor of strong governments that will keep greedy reckless businesses in check. And because those businesses are selling products to consumers, and those consumers for the most part don’t seem willing to abandon buying cars and eating meat, then even the principle of democracy is becoming suspect, and places like China start looking more attractive to greens, because China has the authority to make the people follow its directives.
What the greens fail to notice however, is that authoritarian “social order” can serve any number of priorities. It can serve empire building, it can serve warmongering, it can serve any group goal, really. There is nothing inherently green about being authoritarian. And groups can also organise in far more interesting ways than simply becoming authoritarian top-down power structures.
I think the greens that follow the authoritarian model are in for a nasty shock.

@ Scott Mandia
I looked at your website. It starts with a “wisdom”:
“What’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true”
Aha, predictions. They are difficult, especially when they are about the future. Now let’s look who is spreading wisdom like this:
“Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland (referring then to ozone depletion)”
And what happend concerning all the ozone predicitions? Did you check it? Do you know that the Ozon hole is still here, and as big as always, instead the FCKW concentrations in Antarctica decreased?
What about all the people who should be fried because of the naughty hole in the sky? All the billions with skin cancer?
If people had checked the story with the Ozone hole, the climate-change story would never have happend.

Well Leif, I made exactly the same comment as you concerning the absence of trend since the 50ies. But only one comment out of two gets published (at least in my case).

rbateman (04:25:47) :
Stephen Wilde (23:48:17) :
There is really not much correlation between observed climate changes and the progression of a single solar cycle which is surprising if the cosmic ray effect is at all significant.
“The IPCC’s man-centered universe is as backwards as the Dark Ages, feeding on ignorance and fear of the place we live.
Someday, we will be able to predict both the climate and the solar cycles, but not if the IPCC manages to control science first”.
rbateman,
How right you are.
The populations of the West are brainwashed by their Governments.
People are told that we have to return to other, less ambitious and material values, eat less meat, show more respect for Government and Government Officials.
In the mean time our politicians state we have to invest more money in education.
That’s what they say, but they don’t.
Germany spend 7 billion Euro’s in a cash for clunkers project but has no budget
for education.
Billions have been invested in spin and manipulation.
Bilions more are spend to lure the corrupt leaders of the Third World countries into a the Cimate Change Scam and stop the development of their populations for decades to come and deprive them from cheap food and energy.
The skeptic opposition is infiltrated by people who take the lead in the discussions but support the insane Carbon Taxation.
This is a frontal attack on human civilization.
Fortunately most people in the West are fed up with Government Meddling and spending. Even if people lack the knowledge or even the interest for the Climate debate, they don’t want to lose their freedom.
If this hoax is stopped however, it has to be stopped in the USA.
If the USA rejects the Climate Bill, we have bought more time and time is our side.

It seems that some hearts beat secretly thanks to CO2 feedback…

Stephen Wilde (23:48:17) :
The main shifts in global air temperature trend seem to occur at approximately 25 to 30 years intervals when the oceans change phase. Even on shorter ENSO type interannual time scales we see a rapid and direct response in the air to ocean SST changes.
There is really not much correlation between observed climate changes and the progression of a single solar cycle which is surprising if the cosmic ray effect is at all significant.
I wouldn’t expect to see a correlation between a single solar cycle an climate changes, but then if one looks at the oceans as a large resistor/capacitor pair and the atmosphere as a small resistor/capacitor pair, a better correlation may be possible. Let me explain, since the ocean has an enormous capacity to store energy, it cannot change very quickly, hence little correlation would be observed. A single solar cycle is simply too short a time span. The oceans serve as a low-pass filter, absorbing higher frequency events. Because of the limited surface area of the ocean (compared to its volume) it would release energy at a limited rate (the resistor). Hurricanes and tropical storms are essentially a short to the upper atmosphere, hence a higher energy release. The atmosphere has only a small capacity (small capacitor) compared to the ocean (large capacitor) and will respond to changes more quickly (high-pass filter). This would be the daily weather. How galactic cosmic rays (GCM) affect the formation of clouds, and the newly discovered interaction between the solar wind and the magnetosphere affect the weather and climate is yet to be seen.
The analogy presented above is undoubtedly overly simple, and new research is adding to our knowledge every day, but it could be modeled, probably with better accuracy than the current global climate models than the IPCC uses.

mark twain (00:37:15): ” . . . ipcc explains the warming up to 1950 with natural forces, inkl. sun aktivities!”
Could you supply a reference that supports your statement?

An article by frethack on the Naked Scientists website says that there is a correlation between ITCZ (Inter Tropical Convergence Zone) and solar activity in its effects on the Gulf Stream. It is not work that the IPCC has taken account of. Unfortunately the accompanying figures are not visible on my computer.

Robert (04:32:09) :
“I relocated to Nome, and just in time too”
Uhhhh, I hate to tell you this, but…..
Those gold strikes that were found in the hills north of Nome? That’s the old beach line. Placer deposits formed from gold washed out of the hills. When the gold got washed down to the beach line, wave action caused the gold to settle to the bed rock.
So, you may want to move above the locations of those old gold strikes ’cause that’s where global warming will put sea level. As I recall, they were some 200 feet above the present site of Nome.
But then, there are also some ancient beach lines about the same distance UNDER the water there. That’s where global cooling will put the beach line.
You pays your money, you takes your choice.
(I spent a summer anchored off of Nome working for the Marine Minerals Technology Center expedition to find sea floor placer deposits back in ’67.)
Regards,
Steamboat Jack

“Flanagan (00:36:42) :
A very mysterious mechanism indeed. And still not supported by any observation. Moreover, how is it the sun is “fading” since the 90ies and all we got is a warming? Even 20 years later? 2009 is not going to be a cold year, far from that. August and July were globally pretty hot and September seems to be setting a new record
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/amsutemps.html
check Channel 5″
I look forward to reading Flanagan’s nonsense!
I wish he commented every day; good laugh of the day!
Enough said by me!

@Fred Lightfoot: A great read, Fred. Your oilfield life was more adventurous than my military one. I don’t know if you realize that your account of the various situations you encountered is way too specific with regards to temperatures, wind speeds, wave heights, hail depths and lightning strikes.
You see, Fred, everything in climate research is postulated from proxies for actual events. In this way it is possible to model the temperature of an area with a 1600K radius with a single temperature reading and forecast the temperature 100 years hence to an accuracy of one one-hundredth of a degree C. Your reports of actual events, should the dates become known, would destroy no end of GCMs in which taxpayers are heavily invested.;-)
You’re a breath of fresh air, sir.

” Not showing the idiocyncratic movements dont tell us anything. ”
should have read “That they are not showing the idiocyncratic movements of the climate does not tell us anything. “

Scott Mandia (03:24:55) :
“Personally, I would love to see Svensmark be correct and that AGW is not a concern because then we can rest knowing that there is, for the most part, nothing we can do about it.”
Scott Mandia,
You are really incredible.
You master the art of writing a ton of crap in a single sentence.
“If AGW is not a concern and we are heading for a new ice age we can rest?”
If Svensmark is correct, we will have a serious problem feeding the world’s population.
Cooling, look at our history, is a much bigger threat to humanity than any warming.
But the biggest threat for all of us right now is the political objective that lies behind
the AGW/Climate Change Doctrine.
So, wake up to the facts and start using your brain.

It’s easy to see that man better start looking into where we can grow enough food during the future cooling period and not wasting time on the stupid AGW politics.
But than again, I think were on the slope towards change that cannot be changed by any man.

Leif Svalgaard (05:20:47) :
“Nick Yates (04:45:09) :
If only WUWT could get Henrik Svensmark to discuss this here with Dr Svalgaard. It would be so interesting.”
He won’t, as Al Gore won’t either.”
This very, very close to an ad hom. quite uncharacteristically for Leif.

@ Robert (04:32:09) :
After Katrina it had become obvious that AGW had caused stronger and more frequent hurricanes, so I moved again, to Maine.
Atlantic hurricane frequency follows a natural 20 to 30 year cycle. The current “active” cycle began in 1995. According to Vechi, et. al. (2008) warmer sea-surface temperatures have likely contributed to more intense hurricanes and will continue to do so into the future. Of less certainty is whether or not the frequency of hurricanes is being influenced by global warming. More research is needed to test this hypothesis. I would read Dr. Gray’s opinions on this as he is quite the authority on hurricanes.
Vecchi, G.A., Swanson, K.L., & Soden, B.J. (2008). Whither hurricane activity?. Science. 322, 687-689.
@ Johnny Honda (05:44:28) :
I hope that this discussion doesn’t turn into an ozone hole debate. The link to human activities and ozone loss is very well established. After the Montreal Protocol and subsequent revisions, there are certainly fewer CFCs that end up in the stratosphere to destroy ozone. CFCs take decades to centuries to be removed so it is no surprise that there is still a thin ozone. The latest predictions for a recovery are discussed in the link below:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2006/ozone_recovery.html
This is also the problem with greenhouse gases, esp. CO2. If you believe greenhouse gases are contributing to the modern day global warming (of course I do and most here do not) then even with mitigation the long-term residence of CO2 will still cause warming long after these remedies are in place.
@ Johnny Honda (06:09:32) :
I had assumed that Tamino’s Open Mind bloge was well known here. In my opinion, he has the best blog out there when it comes to actually analyzing data. For example, he smashed the article from McLean, de Freitas and Carter that claimed to show how ENSO might be causing the trend in global warming. See:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/old-news/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/influence-of-the-southern-oscillation-on-tropospheric-temperature/
After Tamino’s rebuttal of this journal article, many others showed the same problems with the concluding comments about NSO and trends. The bottom line is this is how science works. Papers get published, experts look at the claims and the data, and either accept it or rebut it. Talk is cheap when it is not supported by data nor discussed in the peer-reviewed literature.
I would be very careful if you intend to tap Tamino’s bees nest. You will likely be coming to a gun fight armed with a knife.

Dell Hunt, Michigan (07:36:10) :
“And after one of the coldest winters and coolest summers here in Michigan this past year, global warming is bound to be missed.”
Michigan warming has held up for half a year, would be the correct assertion.
Michigan, or even the US, is not the globe.
As depicted here, http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/gistemp/NMAPS/tmp_GHCN_GISS_HR2SST_1200km_Anom0603_2009_2009_1951_1980/GHCN_GISS_HR2SST_1200km_Anom0603_2009_2009_1951_1980.gif , Holland had a warm summer – the 9th in a row – as had most of the Northern Hemisphere (by contrast, most of the Southern Hemisphere had a mild winter). I’m the wittness for Holland.

dorlomin (07:05:19) :
The earth is warmer than it should be due to its atmospehre, a phenominem known as the greenhouse effect.
Yep, atmosphere being the key word.
However, the atmosphere is composed of nitrogen and oxygen mainly, which heat us after being heated by the surface being heated by the sun.
Temperature on other planets depends on received Sun energy and their atmospheric pressure, not depending what the atmosphere is composed of. Earth is in line with other planets.
Heat capacity of the atmosphere is misinterpreted as “greenhouse effect”, that is the root problem of all that climatological computer model alchemy.
Has the water vapor/CO2 itself been responsible for (wrongly calculated) +33K, deserts should be much colder than tropics and Arctic should experience strongest warming as their atmosphere is dry; neither is true.

It must be annoying for Svensmark if their mechanism – which is almost certainly one of the most important insights of climatology in decades – is being largely ignored because of a paranoid politicized cult that prefers the explanations with a big potential to influence politics over the explanations that are supported by the objective evidence.
Nice article.

Mike McMillan (03:34:03) : The CO2 chart climb is as steady as you get, but the global temperature it’s supposed to be driving seem pretty oblivious to it….About the only things keeping pace with CO2 are the GISS adjustments.
Nice way to put it.

Scott A. Mandia (07:39:41) :
I hope that this discussion doesn’t turn into an ozone hole debate. The link to human activities and ozone loss is very well established. After the Montreal Protocol and subsequent revisions, there are certainly fewer CFCs that end up in the stratosphere to destroy ozone. CFCs take decades to centuries to be removed so it is no surprise that there is still a thin ozone.
I am not so sure.. the AGW come just in time to cover the ozone scientific blamage:
http://www.junkscience.com/sep07/Chemists_poke_holes_in_ozone_theory.htm
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070924/full/449382a.html
This is also the problem with greenhouse gases, esp. CO2. If you believe greenhouse gases are contributing to the modern day global warming (of course I do and most here do not) then even with mitigation the long-term residence of CO2 will still cause warming long after these remedies are in place.
I see it is a belief. I believe its effect is indistinguishable from natural effects.
Btw, recent study suggested the “long-time residence” of CO2 is close to 10-15 years.

Mark Fawcett (04:22:26) : Just recovered from passing out whilst reading the following on the BBC:
But they had to have this hackneyed statement in the article, their rallying call :
The survey, by Cardiff University, shows there is still some way to go before the public’s perception matches that of their elected leaders.
I wonder if even they are tired of it all.

Chris Schoneveld (04:24:49) :
It appears the theory is moving on without Lief.

Anthony, I can translate the piece if you’d like. My address is rikard at the trygghetsvakten dot se domain.

Robert (04:32:09) : Well I’m here to tell ya buddy…I’m going with the models, they’ve saved me many times before.
I went with a few models too, as girlfriends. They didn’t save me from anything. They were good to look at though—for a while. But it was like chocolate ; great at first, but you get sick of it after a while and don’t want it anymore. It just goes to show you how reliable models, climate and/or human, are.
I’m looking for low maintenance girls now.

oakgeo (00:24:32) :
“Please get it professionally translated. I think I just had a freshman flashback.”
My guess is that you mean “edited” rather than translated. The text as displayed needs only a few tweaks to make it grammatically correct. So, here’s one possible edited version; others are welcome to try reediting.
———————————–
While the Sun Sleeps
Henrik Svensmark, Professor, DTU, Copenhagen
Global Warming has stopped, and a cooling is beginning. But, no Climate Model has predicted a cooling – quite the contrary. This means that future climate is unpredictable, writes Henrik Svensmark.
Over the last few years, the Star which keeps us alive has had almost no Sunspots, which are the usual signs of the Sun’s magnetic activity.
Last week, the team behind Sohosatellitten (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) reported that the number of sunspot-free days suggests that solar activity is heading toward its lowest level in about 100 years. Everything indicates that the Sun is moving into a hibernation-like state, and the obvious question is whether it has any significance for us on Earth.
If you ask the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which represents the current consensus on climate change, the answer is a reassuring “nothing.” But, history and recent research suggests that that view probably is completely wrong. Let us take a closer look at why.
Solar activity always has varied. Around the year 1000, we had a period of very high solar activity, which coincided with the Medieval Warm Period. It was a period when frosts in May (in Copenhagen) were an almost unknown phenomenon and of great importance for a good harvest. Vikings settled in Greenland and explored the coast of North America. China’s population doubled over this period. But, after about 1300, the Earth began to get colder, and it was the beginning of the period we now call the Little Ice Age. In this cold period, all the Viking settlements in Greenland disappeared, Sweden were surprised to see Denmark freeze over in ice, and the Thames in London froze repeatedly. More serious were the long periods of crop failure, which resulted in a poorly nourished population. Because of disease and hunger, the population was reduced by about 30% in Europe.
It is important to note that the Little Ice Age was a global event. It ended in the late 19th century as an increase in solar activity began. Over the past 50 years, solar activity has been the highest since the Medieval Warm Period over 1000 years ago. And now, it appears that the Sun is heading once again toward what is called a “Grand Minimum” such as we saw during the Little Ice Age.
Some have tried to explain the correlation between solar activity and climate through the ages as a coincidence, but it turns out that, almost no matter what time period is being studied – not just the last 1000 years – that correlation is there. Solar activity over the past 10,000 years has fluctuated repeatedly between high and low, with the Sun being in “Sleep Mode” approximately 17% of the time, each episode followed by a cooling of the Earth.
One can wonder that the IPCC does not believe that the Sun’s changing activity has no effect on the climate, but the reason is that they only include changes in solar radiation.
Looking at radiation only would be the simplest way by which the Sun could change the climate – a bit like turning up and down the brightness of a light bulb.
Satelite measurements of solar radiation have shown that the variations are too small to cause climate change, but many have closed their eyes to a second, much more powerful way that the Sun is able to affect Earth’s climate. In 1996, we discovered a surprising influence of the Sun – its impact on Earth’s cloud cover. High energy accelerated particles from exploded stars, the Cosmic Radiation, are helping to form clouds.
When the Sun is active, its magnetic field shields more effectively against the cosmic rays from outer space before they reach our planet. These changes regulate the Earth’s cloud cover, which can turn the Earth’s temperature up or down. High solar activity produces fewer clouds, and the Earth gets warmer. Low solar activity gives Earth inferior shielding against cosmic rays, which results in increased cloud cover and hence a cooling. As the Sun’s magnetism has doubled in strength during the 20th century, this natural mechanism may be responsible for a large part of Global Warming during this period.
This also explains why most climate scientists are trying to ignore this possibility. They in fact favor the idea that the 20th century temperature rise is due mainly to human emissions of CO2. If the Sun has influenced a significant part of warming in the 20th century, it means that CO2’s contribution necessarily must be smaller.
Ever since our theory was put forward in 1996, it has undergone very sharp criticism, which is normal in science.
First, it was said that a link between clouds and solar activity could not be correct because no physical mechanism was known. But in 2006, after many years of work, we managed to conduct experiments at DTU Space, where we demonstrated the existence of a physical mechanism. Cosmic radiation helps to form aerosols, which are the seeds for cloud formation.
Then came the criticism that the mechanism we found in the laboratory was unable to survive in the real atmosphere, and therefore had no practical significance. But that criticism we have just emphatically rejected. It turns out that the sun itself is doing what we might call natural experiments. Giant solar flares can have the cosmic radiation on Earth dive suddenly over a few days. In the days after the eruption, cloud cover falls by about 4 per cent. And the content of liquid water in clouds (droplets) is reduced by almost 7 per cent. Indeed, you could say that the clouds on Earth originated in space.
Therefore we have looked at the sun’s magnetic activity with increasing concern, since it began to wane in the mid-1990s.
That the sun could fall asleep in a deep minimum was suggested by solar scientists at a meeting in Kiruna in Sweden two years ago. As Nigel Calder and I updated our book “The Chilling Stars” therefore, we wrote a little provocative passage, “we recommend that our friends enjoy Global Warming while it lasts.”
Indeed, Global Warming has stopped, and a cooling is beginning. Last week, it was argued by Mojib Latif from the University of Kiel at the UN World Climate Conference in Geneva that cooling may continue through the next 10 to 20 years.
His explanation was natural changes in North Atlantic circulation and not in solar activity. But no matter how it is interpreted, the natural variations in climate then penetrate more and more.
One consequence may be that the sun itself will show its importance for climate and thus test the theories of Global Warming. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary.
This means that projections of future climate are unpredictable. A forecast that says it may be either warmer or colder for 50 years, is not very useful, since science is not able to predict solar activity.
So in many ways, we stand at a crossroads. The near future will be extremely interesting and I think it is important to recognize that nature is completely independent of what we humans think about it. Will Greenhouse theory survive a significant cooling of the Earth? Not in its current dominant form. Unfortunately, tomorrow’s climate challenges will be quite different than greenhouse theory’s predictions, and perhaps it agin will become popular to investigate the sun’s impact on climate.
Professor Henrik Svensmark is director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at DTU Space. His book “The Chilling Stars” has also been published in Danish as “Climate and the Cosmos” (Gads Forlag, DK ISBN 9788712043508)

@Scott A. Mandia
thanks for the Link. There it says:
“But the researchers show that the ozone hole has not started to shrink a lot as a result. The scientists predict the ozone hole will not start shrinking a lot until 2018. By that year, the ozone hole’s recovery will make better time.”
So my point is confirmed!
Maybe you should also read in “Nature” Vol. 449 the Article “Chemists poke a hole in ozon theory”
“I would be very careful if you intend to tap Tamino’s bees nest. You will likely be coming to a gun fight armed with a knife”
Oh, I’m so scared, I will have troubles sleeping tonight!
Everything that Tamino in his blog “Narrow Mind” does (but I didn’t read all his stuff), is using Hansen’s corrupted GISS temperature to “proof” that WUWT is wrong.
And the fact that he said once something correct, has no meaning, even a broken clock shows twice a day the correct time.

Fred Lightfoot (02:44:03) :
You really should write a memoir, not to prove that weather is local, just to share your experiences of ~50 years of adventure in the oil biz. Sounds like you have quite an interesting tale to tell to us armchair adventurers and probably many astute observations of how things really work in parts of the world that most of us are so isolated from. Get at it! (please)

RR Kampen (07:38:28) :
“Indeed, global warming stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth, on the contrary. This means that projections of future climate is unpredictable, writes Henrik Svensmark.”
So clever. Future climate is unpredictable but Svensmark knows ‘a cooling is beginning’ 🙂
RR Kampen,
I do not understand why you make this rather patronizing remark but
if you make a quote, please quote all the remarks made by Svensmark about the cooling, the climate models and the sun.
Because now you are placing his remarks out of the context.
I would be careful with that, especially because this is not a scientific report but as Anthony stated at the beginning of the article:
“Translation is from Google translation with some post translation cleanup of jumbled words or phrases by myself. In cases were the words were badly jumbled or didn’t quite make sense I inserted [my interpretation in brackets]”.

Mark (04:45:49) :
simplified drawing of the theory from your link :
http://www.sciencebits.com/files/pictures/climate/crcFig2.jpg
Something I think some don’t realize is that the cosmic ray level is not a constant. It varies, higher and lower. So just watching the sun to evaluate how much of cosmic rays are getting into the earths atmosphere and seeding clouds isn’t enough. You have to factor in cosmic ray levels.
And good luck trying to get a perfect handle on that!
The fact still remains that cosmic rays form aerosols–“the rest are details”.

“”” Tenuc (00:47:50) :
If only the climate of earth were so simple that major changes depended just on one factor. Unfortunately this simplistic view is wrong, and our chaotic climate depends on multiple interlinked mechanisms to keep it within the bounds of a few degrees of temperature variability we usually see.
The Svensmark theory may well be correct, but like CO2 caused AGW, I’m sure it will not turn out to be the sole mechanism. However, with Copenhagen around trhe corner, it’s good to see some publicity which shows the CO2 theory is very weak and perhaps help stop global Cap & Trade being adopted. “””
I don’t think anyone; including Dr Svensmark has ever suggested that his theory is a complete explanation of “climate change”.
Does the term “natural variability” mean anything to anyone ?
Svensmark’s cosmic ray thesis, is simply one component of “natural variability”; that is all he is saying.
And Frank Wentz (RSS) et al “How Much More Rain will Global Warming Bring ?” SCIENCE July-7-2007 pretty much points to the negative feedback control loop that depends solely on the physical properties of H2O; and that is what holds earth’s temperature range in a comfortable range, that is NOT controllable by humans.
So sad that basic problem solving logic skills aren’t taught in school any more.
George

Stephen Wilde (23:48:17) :
When the Sun goes quiet, we here on Earth experience more of the effects of Galactic influence, which is never quite totally overriden by the Sun.
The solar modulation is only a few percent, and the Galactic influence does not vary on a time scale of centuries or faster”
Leif,
That was not my comment. It was from rbateman.
I agree with you about the sun on shorter time scales and only disagree on century or multi century time scales.

Re: Gene Nemetz (07:59:31) :
Mike McMillan (03:34:03) : “The CO2 chart climb is as steady as you get, but the global temperature it’s supposed to be driving seem pretty oblivious to it….About the only things keeping pace with CO2 are the GISS adjustments.”
“Nice way to put it.”
—
Disagree. The rise in [CO2] is not the only thing driving global temperature. It is only by far the most important. But there is no reason to believe the rise should be strictly linear. Just as there is no reason to believe that year-to-year temperature variability was always zero before 1900.
If CO2-levels were at those of 1900, 2007 and maybe 2008 should have become close to the coldest on record: deep solar minimum + powerful La Niña + two volcanoes. Instead they made it to the top 10% warmest. Stronger evidence for GW is hard to get by.

Graeme Rodaughan (23:47:21) says “Refreshing. Now if only the Politicians were paying attention…”
We are Graeme.
Coupled with solar wind effects, iris effect, basic irradiance and cosmic ray interference it starts to add up to a meaningful and repeated if unpredictable influence. Ocean currents may effect only short-term patterns (i.e. 1-100 years) but still have to get that heat from somewhere. Volcanic activities cause pinpricks in the record. Other factors, including man’s activities could just be generating further noise. Since even the range of sensitivities of any of these is unknown, projection is futile.
UK Sceptic (01:05:16) repeats the often heard “…the UK’s politicians are as dumb as rocks when it comes to science…”
We know, that’s why we are paying attention.
Incidentally, I was disappointed that “The survey also found that: 39% thought leading experts still questioned the causes of climate change”. It is a fact that some of them do. Why do 61% not believe an easily demonstrable fact?
Mick (01:46:48) “Folks, all this science is OK, but I’m afraid it’s irrelevant…Unfortunately the ignorant public has a mob mentality, the loudest megaphone wins…”
Half right Mick. Science by itself will not win the argument although making the public less ignorant is eventually the solution.
This is a facts verses hyperbole war rather than a religious one. (You cannot actually disprove a pure religion – and why would you want to?)
Just keep making sure the facts are heard.
To Fred Lightfoot (02:44:03)
Sir, with all that you have said I respectfully agree. Time for change.
(Unless you will accept silk as milk from butterflies – OK I’m pushing it)
While we are on butterflies – the butterfly effect (see how I did that) means that all of us effect the climate every time we step on a blade of grass, eat a morsel or take a breath. Everyone in this country and on every nation on earth. Including those who are not talking to us at the moment. That – times about 7billion – is what we need to “control” to moderate anthropological effects. While we are waiting for that to happen – prepare for the worst (either way) and live with it.
(PS Moths – I know)

Fred Lightfoot (02:44:03):
You must have been an ex-Shell colleague of mine.
Your telling stories will be construed by the alarmists as a proof that climate change is playing havoc with our fragile world.

In 5 years, it will be obvious to anyone with a brain that AGW-theory is dead. I expect Gore, Hansen and possibly Mann to be the lone holdouts. (Just wait!!! It’ll be back as soon as this Ice Age is over!!!)

Dorlomin. I have no time for error bars – they are too wide. If we cannot say with ANY certainty what the temperature will be then why bother? As a layman, I find such error bars a nonsense, and didn’t realise until a while ago that science worked on such things. I take your point that the current flatline/cooling might be a “idiocyncratic movement”, then again it might not be!
Yes we understand that the Earth is warmer than it would otherwise be without its Greenhouse Gases, but we do not know what will happen when we increase one – and one that is very minor to water vapour. We don’t know if we’ll have a positive effect (as the science says) or whether, for example, we’ll have increased cloud cover leading to cooling. Like I said, we appear to have checks and balances within the climate system that we do not understand.
I must be a ‘real sceptic’ then – according to your criteria, because although I’m not really a sceptic of CO2 forcing, I am a sceptic of what will result. We don’t understand what happens within the climate system, and we’re only just realising what part ocean currents may have played in recent warming – more learning then!
Scepticism SHOULD be easy and natural for a scientist, but it would appear that many scientists are taking correlation as causation, and worse – starting out with a pre-conceived notion, and then trying to prove it correct. Surely, this is not science? In the past week we had a scientist (a scientist!) saying “Maybe the Earth is trying to tell us something”. Lovelock’s bizarre comments in the past have left me breathless, but this?
I think we will one day fully understand how the climate system works, but I believe that day to be decades into the future – seriously. If you remove the ’98 El Nino there has been no statistically-significant warming since 1995. That’s a long time, Dorlomin! What we’re experiencing is nothing unusual at all – nor unprecedented. But returning to my original point, we really have no idea, and we should stop making out we do. I see no warming to be worried about at all (certainly not here in England!) and a decadel rate of 0.12 within the troposphere isn’t going to keep me awake at nights. At some point the Warmists are going to have to re-evaluate their convictions, and start back-peddling. We’ve seen this week some saying we’re in for 20 years of cooling before man-made warming returns! Oh dear! Some just don’t get it, do they? Cooling is natural – warming is man-made. Has science come to this?

On the Tamino point, I commented there, and found his attitude, shall we say ‘odd’. I certainly wouldn’t be comfortable in his presence. It’s okay to get annoyed, but it’s quite another to brow-beat someone with angry, childish ranting. Ungentlemanly.

Smokey (09:03:01) :
Thanks Smokey,
You have done a better job than me.

johng (07:41:32) says “The politicians haven’t got the balls for it! The green votes/taxes are too much!”
I accept the cowardly label – I use a pseudonym here because even being seen to consider “skeptical” views can affect my job as a European politician with an environment brief. I hope I will not lose too much respect from you for that – I am trying to spread common sense from inside the bunker.
Nevertheless if it is “green votes” that we are chasing than educating the masses is still the solution, which is why this site is so valuable. The green vote comes from green voters, not politicians.
That’s why I think the BBC statement highlighted by Gene Nemetz (08:04:59) so odd.
“The survey, by Cardiff University, shows there is still some way to go before the public’s perception matches that of their elected leaders.”
Political fact of life 1) Leaders are elected to represent / serve the public. Their “perception” can therefore only lag that of the public. Hopefully, not by too much.

Fred Lightfoot (02:44:03), thanks for your comment. I come to this site, in part, for down-to-earth stories like yours. The last paragraph seems like a good candidate for Quote of the Week.

My only issue is the claim that “no climate model has predicted global cooling.”
This may be true of the climate models put together by “experts” or the ones that get press, but a simple bloke such as myself has offered a best-fit adjusted sine wave (and double sine-wave) against the HadCrut data and showed that this basic model projects that we have recently hit the warming peak and are now going to cool for the next 20 years or so.
Does it take a gazillion different mechanisms and crunch them on supercomputer? No. It’s a recursive analysis that uses less than a half-dozen parameters and takes a mere few minutes to crunch away on an excel spreadsheet.
And if i had to bet on my results versus the models showing runaway warming, I’d bet on the sine-wave fit.
But these kinds of analyses are just too simple for academia to take them seriously.
In my career as an actuary, I’ve never been burned yet by trying to simplify the complex in making my projections. I have, however, been burned trying to add complexity in an attempt to improve accuraccy.

The more I read on Tamino’s blog “feeble mind” (sorry for more publicity for this), the more I question his physical knowledge:
“Global temperature responds to changes in the energy flow of earth’s climate system. When more energy flows through the system the planet heats up; with less energy flow the planet cools down
Changes in the energy flow constitute climate forcings. We know of many, including greenhouse gases, solar changes, ozone, snow albedo, land use, aerosols (both from volcanoes and from industrial processes), etc.
By adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere more energy flows through the system?? The energy flow through the system is not changed by greenhouse gases. There is a diagram on Wikipedia with the energy flows through the atmosphere, there everybody can see, that the greenhouse effect doesn’t change the energy flow at all.

“Phil’s Dad (08:59:07) :
the butterfly effect (see how I did that) means that all of us effect the climate every time we step on a blade of grass, eat a morsel or take a breath. Everyone in this country and on every nation on earth. Including those who are not talking to us at the moment. That – times about 7billion – is what we need to “control” to moderate anthropological effects. While we are waiting for that to happen – prepare for the worst (either way) and live with it.”
Crikey,that’s a far more alarmist position than that of even the most enthusiastic CO2 acolyte !!!
No wonder politicians of that ilk leap upon alarmist theory as a godsend to help with a far more aggressive and concealed agenda.
Not content with limiting our CO2 emissions this politician thinks the world is so sensitive to the presence of humanity that we are looking over a precipice to destruction with every breath.
Where did these guys come from ?
They don’t represent anyone I’ve ever met in daily life yet they got elected somehow.
If the real problem is population, pollution and resource depletion (and it is) then let them be honest about it and not hide behind the irrelevance of CO2 emissions.

Smokey (09:03:01),
Brilliant!

Did you know that our little friend Scott Mandia is a denier of the Medival Warming Period? He seems to like little jokes, isn’t he a funny guy.

Scott A. Mandia (07:39:41)
“You will likely be coming to a gun fight armed with a knife.”
perhaps a sharpened hockey stick will suffice instead…

Tamino says:
“Global temperature responds to changes in the energy flow of earth’s climate system. When more energy flows through the system the planet heats up; with less energy flow the planet cools down.”
Now if we were to amend that to read ‘changes in the RATE of energy flow” Tamino would be mighty close to my analysis but then he would have to consider two new parameters namely:
A varying rate of energy flow from ocean to air
and
A varying rate of energy flow from surface to space.
Then he would have to compare the change in rate of flow effected by a little more CO2 with the natural changes in rate of flow created within the oceans and within the air.
He would see that the CO2 effect is truly miniscule in comparison to the natural changes in rate of flow.
Finally he would have to consider whether a change in the rate of flow limited to the air alone could possibly have any effect on the rate of flow coming naturally from the oceans and he would have to accept that it cannot because air cannot heat water due to the process of evaporation which ensures that any attempt of air to heat water just increases evaporation which is a net cooling process.
I won’t hold my breatrh.

@ Barry Foster (05:59:33) :
Well said, Barry.
As a mere geologist, I have learned a heck of a lot recently about climate and weather, mainly by following WUWT. There has been an awful lot to learn and much of it rather difficult physics (for me). I have moved from being a sceptic to being a ‘coolist’ to being an ‘I’m really not too sureist’ – in fact, I believe that most of us here might say that the more we’ve learned the less we know about the complex relationships that exist between the various potential drivers of climate except for one thing – IT AIN’T CO2. Get used to it, Al!

SOHO-23: Understanding a Peculiar Solar Minimum.
http://www.soho23.org/
The SOHO Science Working Team has scheduled the twenty third in the series of successful SOHO workshops to focus on the topic of the unusual minimum of solar activity that has persisted in 2007, 2008 and 2009. SOHO-23 is scheduled for 21-25 September 2009, at the Asticou Inn in Northeast Harbor, Maine.
Is anyone that posts to this blog going to this conference? I am very interested in a summary of the presentations.

Barry Foster (09:27:24) :
Dorlomin. I have no time for error bars – they are too wide. If we cannot say with ANY certainty what the temperature will be then why bother? As a layman, I find such error bars a nonsense, and didn’t realise until a while ago that science worked on such things
—————————
Words fail me. Do you really have such a limited grasp over the basics of studying physical systems.

All this talk about Tamino, is that a singular named person like Cher or Madonna? Who exactly is he/she as I don’t see any information on the Open Mind site.

Here is a slightly more tidied up version – Philip Foster
From the http://www.wattsupwiththat.com website
This opinion piece from Professor Henrik Svensmark was published September 9th in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Translation is from Google translation with some post translation cleanup of jumbled words or phrases by myself. In cases were the words were badly jumbled or didn’t quite make sense I inserted [my interpretation in brackets]. Hat tip to Carsten Arnholm of Norway for bringing this to my attention. – Anthony Watts.
While the sun sleeps
HENRIK SVENSMARK,
Professor, Danish National Space Centre, Copenhagen
Indeed, global warming stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth, on the contrary. This means that projections of future climate are unpredictable, writes Henrik Svensmark.
The star which keeps us alive has, over the last few years, had almost no sunspots – which are the usual signs of the sun’s magnetic activity.
Last week, the scientific team behind the Soho satellite (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) reported that the number of sunspot-free days suggest that solar activity is heading towards its lowest level in about 100 years. Everything indicates that the Sun is moving into a hibernation-like state, and the obvious question is whether it has any significance for us on Earth.
If you ask the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), representing the current consensus on climate change, the answer is a reassuring ‘none’. But history and recent research suggests that the IPCC is probably completely wrong. Let us take a closer look at why.
Solar activity has always varied. Around the year 1000, we had a period of very high solar activity, which coincided with the medieval warm period. It was a period when frosts in May was an almost unknown phenomenon and of great importance for good harvests. Vikings settled in Greenland and explored the coast of North America. For example, China’s population doubled over this period. But after about 1300, the earth began to get colder and it was the beginning of the period we now call the Little Ice Age. In this cold period all the Viking settlements in Greenland disappeared. Swedes [were surprised to see Denmark covered in ice], and the Thames in London froze repeatedly. But more serious were the long periods of crop failure, which resulted in a poorly nourished population. Because of disease and hunger [the population was reduced] by about 30 per cent in Europe.
It is important to note that the Little Ice Age was a global event. It ended in the late 19th century and was followed by an increase in solar activity. Over the past 50 years solar activity has been at its highest since the medieval warm period 1,000 years ago. And now it appears that the sun is heading towards what is called ‘a grand minimum’ such as we saw in the Little Ice Age.
The correlation between solar activity and climate through the ages has tried to be explained away as coincidence. But it turns out that almost no matter what time period is studied, not just the last 1000 years, there is a correlation: Solar activity has repeatedly over the past 10,000 years has fluctuated between high and low. Actually, the sun over the past 10,000 years spent approx. 17 percent of the time in a sleep mode, with a cooling of the Earth following.
One can wonder why the IPCC believes that the changing activity of the sun has no effect on the climate, but the reason is that they only consider changes in solar radiation.
Just radiation would be the simplest way by which the sun could change the climate. A bit like turning up and down the brightness of a light bulb.
Satellite measurements of solar radiation have shown that the variations are too small to cause climate change, but the IPCC has closed its eyes to a second, much more powerful way, the sun is able to affect earth’s climate. In 1996 we discovered a surprising influence of the sun: its impact on earth’s cloud cover. High energy accelerated particles of exploded stars, the cosmic radiation, are helping to form clouds.
When the Sun is active its magnetic field shields the earth better against the cosmic rays from outer space before they reach our planet, and by regulating the Earth’s cloud cover the sun can turn up or down the temperature. High solar activity produce fewer clouds and the earth gets warmer. Low solar activity reduces the shielding against cosmic radiation, and this results in increased cloud cover and hence a cooling. As the sun’s magnetism has doubled its strength during the 20th century, this natural mechanism may be responsible for a large part of global warming during this period.
This also explains why most climate scientists are trying to ignore this possibility. They in fact favour the idea that the 20th century temperature rise is mainly due to human emissions of CO2. If the sun has influenced a significant part of warming in the 20 century, it means that CO2’s contribution must necessarily be smaller.
Ever since our theory was put forward in 1996, it has received a very strong criticism, which is normal in science.
First it was said that a link between clouds and solar activity could not be correct because no physical mechanism was known. But in 2006, after many years of work, we managed to conduct experiments at the Danish National Space Centre, where we demonstrated the existence of a physical mechanism. The cosmic radiation helps to form aerosols, which are the seeds for cloud formation.
Then came the criticism that the mechanism we found in the laboratory was unable to survive in the real atmosphere and therefore had no practical significance. But this criticism we have just emphatically refuted. It turns out that the sun itself is doing what we might call ‘natural experiments’. Giant solar flares can cause the cosmic radiation on earth to decrease suddenly over a few days. In the days after the eruption cloud cover falls by about 4 per cent. And the content of liquid water in clouds (droplets) is reduced by almost 7 per cent. Indeed, [you could say] that the clouds on Earth originated in space.
Therefore we have been looking at the sun’s magnetic activity with increasing concern since it began to wane in the mid-1990s.
That the sun could fall asleep in a deep minimum was suggested by [solar scientists] at a meeting in Kiruna in Sweden two years ago. As Nigel Calder and I updated our book “The Chilling Stars” therefore, we wrote a little provocative comment, “we recommend our friends to enjoy global warming while it lasts.”
Indeed, global warming stopped and a cooling is beginning. Last week, it was argued by Mojib Latif from the University of Kiel at the UN World Climate Conference in Geneva that cooling may continue through the next 10 to 20 years.
His explanation was natural changes in North Atlantic circulation and not in solar activity. But no matter how it is interpreted, the natural variations in climate then penetrates more and more.
One consequence may be that the sun itself will show its importance for climate and thus test the theories of global warming. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth, on the contrary.
This means that projections of future climate are unpredictable. A forecast [that] says it may be warmer or colder for 50 years is not very useful, for science is not able to predict solar activity.
So in many ways we stand at a crossroads. The near future will be extremely interesting and I think it is important to recognize that nature is completely independent of what we humans think about it. Will the Greenhouse theory survive a significant cooling of the Earth? Not in its current dominant form. Unfortunately, tomorrow’s climate challenges will be quite different from the greenhouse theory’s predictions, and perhaps it will again become popular to investigate the sun’s impact on climate.
Professor Henrik Svensmark is director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Centre Space.
His book “The Chilling Stars” has also been published in Danish as “Climate and the Cosmos” (Gads Forlag, DK ISBN 9788712043508)

Leif Svalgaard (05:20:47) :
No specific trend has been stated. That was yours to discover.
As for cherry picking, the exploration of possibilities does require a starting point. Else we cease to explore.
Fair treatment assigns probabilites to the rise, continuance or fall of a vector.
Cherry picking is a biased conclusion trap, but so is the avoidance of exploration. In both cases, new learning is stifled.

Scott
“You could certainly accuse ME of doing that but not true for Tamino. Tamino is brilliant at analyzing and interpreting data. As an example, see his analysis of arctic warming that appears to starkly contrast Lucy Skywalker’s assertions about no warming trend.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/arctic-analysis/
”
Very pretty work by Tamino using the massaged Giss data. That Tamino’s graphs are so different from Lucy’s which are unadulterated show you just how important it is that the raw data is manipulated by venerable scientists.

This story of “global warming” and its main characters would make a great fiction book, such as The Da Vinci’s Code, because it involves all needed ingredients: secret societies, a church, fanatic followers….etc,etc…just imagine!
It would make, also, which is surprising, a sensational comic story…just imagine:
Super Al fighting against the deniers or Super Al against the hidden WUWT deniers’ fortress, or “The trains of Jim”, etc,etc.

Tom in Texas (11:49:38) “To Phil’s Dad: You’ve got my vote if you run in Texas (and you can come out of the AGW closet).”
Believe me Tom if I were running in Texas I would long since have declared my position on AGW.
(Loved the Rangers against the Indians by the way)

Phil’s Dad (10:40:48) :
“Stephen Wilde (10:02:13) jumps to a conclusion which I am perhaps guilty of leading him to.
He says “Not content with limiting our CO2 emissions this politician thinks the world is so sensitive to the presence of humanity that we are looking over a precipice to destruction with every breath.”
I do believe that everything we do has consequences but I do not for one minute think that they need to be destructive.
The point I was trying rather cack-handedly to make is that it is unrealistic to think that we can control enough climate forcing parameters to pin-point a desirable world temperature and enforce it.
Just controlling man-kind is impossible over any meaningful timescale – let alone the other factors which may well be more relevant.”
So the modellers imagine they can understand the inscrutable, and the politicians (some) imagine they understand enough to control mankind. About the same level, I suspect. Perhaps we live in chaotic systems, and are chaotic systems, because there is an important function here. What makes you (or some others) imagine (the same word again) that we have the knowledge or the wisdom or the understanding or the judgement to bring about an ideal society by control? Why can’t we settle for just some administration of what is actually here?
As for too many people; can you name for me, one other species on the planet which limits its numbers and impact because of some crazy idea about its power to wreck the place? As Philip Stott said, “the planet is tough as an old boot.” If nature knows best there are exactly the right number of people on the planet doing what needs to be done. And I am fed up with tree huggers claiming an exclusive right to speak for nature because they “feel” (this does not include you, necessarily).
If you could just tell me of a eugenicist who believes themself to be from the inferior part of the race, I would be more willing to listen.
Please excuse any exaggerations; I hope they are not extrapolations.

To David in Davis (12:09:02).
I agree with the spirit of what you say but I am a “p11B” man myself.

Juraj V. (11:53:49) :
To refute distant MWP is an old trick, but to refute also relatively recent and well recorded LIA is plain laughable”.
Juaj V.,
I like what you are saying but we are missing out on the volcanic wild card.
This too played quite a role in several extreme events that took place during the LIA.

Dolormin. I’m an engineer, not a scientist, so I cannot work with the 95% error bars that scientists allow themselves http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/ols-with-pumped-up-error-bars-is-crude-the-ipcc-2-ccentury-still-falsified/. If I did, I’d be covering myself (very well, admittedly) if someone died as a result of something I designed or constructed. Surely it’s better to say, ‘We don’t have much of a clue, really”? I live in England. Like I said before, we have the infamous Met Office. Their predictions really are dire – and wrong most of the time. Let me tell you why. They CANNOT predict what the weather will be over my city with any certainty. They know this, and I know this. So they predict it for a region around my city BUT cover themselves by saying that “Some areas may have rain” Do you see what they did there? They’re covered! If I get rain, but my sister 20 miles away doesn’t then they’re correct. If it’s the reverse, they’re correct. If we both get it, they’re still correct! Based on this pathetic level of prediction they award themselves with an 80%+ ‘predicted-correct’ tag. Like I said, I cannot afford such error bars. I couldn’t design a walkway and say ‘There’s a good chance that it won’t hold 100 people all at once, but there’s a chance it will’! I would have to say a maximum number of people. As I said, I didn’t realise that science worked with wildly varying degrees of UNcertainty. I’ll tell you something else. As an atheist I used to look down on the religious because they believe something for which there is no evidence. And here was I, a man who bases his working life on science, aloof in the knowledge that theories would be tested and conclusions drawn. When I look at the utter debacle of what passes for climate science I am appalled. They are dragging down all the other sciences with them – and I’ve read that many geologists are furious with the claims made by climatologists. They’ve seen rapid warming and cooling in rocks – completely natural. Here in England we have the Central England Temperature (CET). From 1696 to 1732 the temperature in England rose 2.2 degrees C, was wholly natural in origin, and was over twice the warming we are experiencing now. I can no longer look down on the religious. I tell you this Dolormin, if we do get a period of 20 years of cooling, then science itself will suffer. People already remember the scares of the past, like a coming ice age, acid rain, the millenium bug, bird flu, world starvation (by now), ozone depletion, and swine flu. They will start to laugh at scientists and their error bars. What good is a prediction if you build-in a huge ‘get-out’? For how much longer do you think the media will be the messengers for crackpot theories on ‘icecaps melting’? Not for long, my friend, not for long.

Mr. Alex (11:52:19) :
dorlomin (11:11:14) :
“Try the lifecycle of stars, they get hotter as they get older.”
So you are implying that the much higher CO₂ levels in the distant past kept the Earth warm enough to support diversifiation and explosion of life & prevented the Earth from perhaps freezing over, which would otherwise have happened due to the cooler sun which could not provide enough energy to prevent snowball Earth from occurring?
Try this; CO₂, unlike the sun, does not radiate energy which can heat the Earth, sorry “mate”.
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So why did it not freeze? 🙂

Talking about the Volcanic Wild Card:
http://volcanism.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/shiveluch-erupts/
Shiveluch erupts 11 September 2009
Posted by admin in Kamchatka, Russia, Shiveluch, activity reports, eruptions.
Tags: Kamchatka, Russia, Shiveluch, volcanic activity reports, volcanic eruptions
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Reports from Russia indicate that a large eruption of Shiveluch began yesterday. A bulletin from the Kamchatka Volcanoes Emergency Response Team (KVERT), issued at 22:35 UTC on 10 September warns that ‘Ash explosions > 10 km (>32,800 ft) ASL from the volcano could affect international and low-flying aircraft’. According to the bulletin, ’strong explosions’ occurred between around 14:19 and 14:55 UTC on 10 September, with seismic data indicating ash plumes reaching 15000 metres above sea level; if ash plumes are indeed reaching 10-15 km altitude, then this is a sizeable event. The bulletin reports that according to seismic data ‘10 volcanic events (ash explosions and hot avalanches or pyroclastic flows) occurred at the lava dome from 16:33 till 20:25 UTC on September 10′. Whether the activity is still continuing is not clear, and there are no visual or satellite images of this event because of cloud cover.
End of message.

“This very, very close to an ad hom. quite uncharacteristically for Leif”
Not at all uncharacteristic for the smug, sanctimonious and omniscient Lief.