RE: [asa] Effect of Solar variability

You may get the publications of Nicola Scafetta at http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/ His lecture this afternoon was excellent and persuasive in the importance of the variability of the sun on global warming. Nicola will be sending me the slides of his presentation and I will pass it along.

Moorad
________________________________________
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Christine Smith [christine_mb_smith@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 1:27 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] Effect of Solar variability

Hi Bill,

Thanks for posting this. I'm going to do some more digging as I want to try and understand the specifics that he's talking about better, but two potential red flags come to mind just on a surficial read. First, his opening statement is:

"The causes of global warming—the increase of approximately 0.8±0.1 °C in
the average global temperature near Earth’s surface since 1900...."

Here, he either completely misstated what he wanted to say, or he doesn't understand what climate change theory fundamentally postulates: the (primary) *cause* of climate change is due to increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The temperature record contains important observations which bear on the subject, no doubt, but to say they are the "cause" (or the postulated cause) is inaccurate.

Secondly, I would be wary of anyone who is claiming to undermine climate change theory on the basis of an analysis of the last 100 years. Although later in the paper, he mentions that "we recently showed that it is possible to reconstruct a phenomenological solar signature (PSS) of climate for the last four centuries.5", even four centuries does not constitute or address the whole of AGW science. Certainly, a period of 100 years and 400 years is enough to say something climatologically, but that he then concludes based on this that "We estimate that the Sun could account for as much as 69% of the increase in Earth’s average temperature,
depending on the TSI reconstruction used.5" sounds to me like a bit of a stretch.

Nevertheless, like I said, I'd like to do some more digging on it. Perhaps Rich and others who are more acquainted with the details of the topic will have more to add here?

In Christ,
Christine

"For we walk by faith, not by sight" ~II Corinthians 5:7

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--- On Wed, 2/11/09, William Hamilton <willeugenehamilton@gmail.com> wrote:

> From: William Hamilton <willeugenehamilton@gmail.com>
> Subject: [asa] Effect of Solar variability
> To: "Asa@calvin.edu" <asa@calvin.edu>
> Date: Wednesday, February 11, 2009, 7:24 AM
> I recently came across the following article:
>
> http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fel.duke.edu%2F~scafetta%2Fpdf%2Fopinion0308.pdf&ei=ss2SSZ2UEqGbtwex79TXCw&usg=AFQjCNHOURrs__u1Zbazc3NBB7JsCIuyuQ&sig2=YKk1hF0U8FTaDN42uvWtmg
>
> In it Bruce J West, (Chief Scientist, Mathematics, Army
> Research Office)
> claims he has developed models that show that 69% of the
> climate change
> since 1900 can be attributed to solar variation. Have any
> of you climate
> change experts seen this?
>
>
>
> --
> William E (Bill) Hamilton Jr., Ph.D.
> Member American Scientific Affiliation
> Austin, TX
> 248 821 8156

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Received on Wed Feb 11 20:04:12 2009