– One of the recent favorite hobby horses of the folks who oppose the idea that mankind’s activities are causing global climate change has been the notion that variations in the sun’s output are behind the changes we are seeing. They come up with an alternative like this periodically and run with it until the accumulated evidence undermines it too badly to continue. Then they switch to another and run off in a different direction.
– Here’s an academic paper from the Proceedings of The Royal Society which states clearly that if anything, the sun’s influence in recent years should have cooled the climate. Next hobby horse, anyone?
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Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature
Abstract:
There is considerable evidence for solar influence on the Earth’s pre-industrial climate and the Sun may well have been a factor in post-industrial climate change in the first half of the last century. Here we show that over the past 20 years, all the trends in the Sun that could have had an influence on the Earth’s climate have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures.
To the main paper: ➡