This is short and sweet: scientists, environmentalists and eco-bloggers have known this for some time but here is the indubitable proof that the sun is not the sole cause of global warming as deniers, skeptics and Inhofe the clown have been bombarding us with their flawed logic.
Leading scientists, including a Nobel Prize-winner, have rounded on studies used by climate sceptics to show that global warming is a natural phenomenon connected with sunspots, rather than the result of the man-made emissions of carbon dioxide. The researchers – all experts in climate or solar science – have told The Independent that the scientific evidence continually cited by sceptics to promote the idea of sunspots being the cause of global warming is deeply flawed.
Link to full article here.
In your face, skeptics! I apologize for not fleshing this out but I'm on call today and do not have the time to write. However this is the sort of news that is heart-warming (pardon the pun) and the MSM needs to put this news out there instead of burying their heads in the sand, and giving far too much relevance to the "hacked emails" meme.
Many sceptics who accept that global temperatures have risen in recent decades suggest it is part of the climate's natural variability and could be accounted for by normal variations in the activity of the Sun. Powerful support for this idea came in 1991 when Eigil Friis-Christensen, director of the Danish National Space Centre, published a study showing a remarkable correlation between global warming and the length of sunspot cycles.
A further study published in 1998 by Mr Friis-Christensen and his colleague Henrik Svensmark suggested a possible explanation for the warming trend with a link between solar activity, cosmic rays and the formation of clouds.
However, many scientists now believe both of these studies are seriously flawed, and that when errors introduced into the analysis are removed, the correlations disappear, with no link between sunspots and global warming. Peter Laut, a former adviser to the Danish Energy Agency who first identified the flaws, said there were practically no observations to support the idea that variations in sunspots played more than a minor role in global warming.
There is no correlation between global warming and solar activity, and no correlation between cloud cover and cosmic rays. The flaws were first identified by Peter Laut, a Danish scientist who was once science adviser to the Danish Energy Agency. Laut, now retired, demonstrated in a study first aired in 2000 and published in a peer-reviewed journal in 2003 that both graphs contained serious errors. When these flaws were corrected, the apparent correlations between global warming and solar activity, and cosmic rays and cloud cover, disappeared. Et Voila.
Friis-Christensen now accepts that any correlation between sunspots and global warming that he may have identified in the 1991 study has since broken down. There is, he said, a clear "divergence" between the sunspots and global temperatures after 1986, which shows that the present warming period cannot be explained by solar activity alone.
Professor Jon Egill Kristjansson, a leading geoscientist at the University of Oslo, said that the divergence between global warming and solar cycles in the late 20th century "is now undisputed". He also points out that if Svensmark is right, there should have been a decrease in cosmic rays, but in fact over the past 50 years they have, if anything, slightly increased – despite statements to the contrary in the Cern proposal of 2000.
"Following Svensmark's mechanism, it seems that any cosmic ray explanation of current global warming can be ruled out," Egill Kristjansson said.
Although the Cloud experiment has only just begun and results are not expected for several years, Svensmark continues to promote the idea that cosmic rays play a significant role in cloud formation. However, other studies into cosmic rays, by both Egill Kristjansson and a separate team of Finnish scientists, have failed to find a link.