A weakening Sun won’t save us
Francis Sedgemore, Friday 12 March 2010 at 14:29 UTC
Observations of decreasing solar activity are argued by some climate change sceptics to point to a fall in temperature during the 21st century. There is even talk of a “Little Ice Age” or “Grand Minimum”, similar to the Maunder Minimum of the late 17th century, that would swamp warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
This could be wishful thinking, given recent climate modelling results which show that decreasing solar activity will lead to a temperature difference of at most 0.3 degrees until the end of the century. That is less than 10% of the projected business-as-usual scenarios published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In their modelling study Potsdam climatologists Georg Feulner and Stefan Rahmstorf simulated three particular solar scenarios:
- a repeat of the last 11-year solar cycle until 2100
- a 0.08% reduction in solar activity (1950 baseline)
- a 0.25% reduction in solar activity (1950 baseline)
The first of these corresponds to the IPCC’s business-as-usual projections, while the second reproduces the Maunder Minimum. With no Grand Minimum in solar activity the model indicates a 3.7–4.5 degree temperature rise above the 1961 to 1990 average level, which matches other recent global warming projections. For the Maunder Minimum reconstruction the temperatures in 2100 are just 0.1 degrees lower, and with scenario #3 the difference is 0.26 degrees.
Feulner and Rahmstorf say that a new Maunder-type solar activity minimum cannot offset global warming caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. They also add that any effect would be temporary, as solar minima tend to last for no more than a few decades.
Further reading: G Feulner and S Rahmstorf, “On the effect of a new grand minimum of solar activity on the future climate on Earth”, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L05707 (2010)
Feed the writer! 
Friday 12 March 2010 at 19:14 UTC
Alas Francis, your argument from authority draws from a poisoned chalice, I for one just do not trust them to do honest science.
Now, just because the UN IPCC, led by a dodgy, superstitious railway engineer come novelist, are a political advocacy group masquerading as a scientific body. A body that practices pseudo science, and even just make stuff up, doesn’t mean that climate change influenced by man’s activity isn’t at least something of an issue worthy of consideration.
But it sure does muddy the water and make it far more difficult to make sensible policy decisions.
Friday 12 March 2010 at 20:34 UTC
Pachauri may be a prime candidate for the Bad Sex Award, and the IPCC may have failed to adequately proof-read its reports, but to say that they are a “political advocacy group masquerading as a scientific body” is utter crap. My main problem with the IPCC is that it is too conservative in its pronouncements, given what the science is telling us. This is where the IPCC acts politically – in its efforts not to offend or sound alarmist.
Friday 12 March 2010 at 23:42 UTC
Francis – Well to my mind some of the key players close to the IPCC have been indulging in malfeasance an order of magnitude beyond a mere failure to “adequately proof-read”. Perhaps I’m just being picky.
I still find it difficult to believe that Phil Jones hasn’t been fired outright for unprofessional conduct simply on the prima facie evidence of ‘Climate Gate’.
And I can assure you that I now do see the IPCC as a political advocacy group masquerading as a scientific body. Really I do, no hyperbole whatsoever. Given what’s come out in the last few months, why would one not?
I can also assure you that I am not alone and it’s not all folks that can be safely dismissed as ‘right wing nut job’s’ who are now cranking eyebrows North.
Now I am convinced the Earth is warming, a little, but I’m just not convinced that it’s anything remotely like the problem punted by the the likes of Al Gore and Prince Charles (OK that is a cheap shot I admit it!).
It now seems as if the dodgy Pachauri may be replaced by Marthinus van Schalkwyk, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism in South Africa and, before he crossed the floor to the ANC, the last leader of the National Party.
You couldn’t make this shit up, really you couldn’t. It really seems as if the IPCC really do not want to be taken seriously.
Now there are shrills on both sides, no doubt about it, but trying to associate a sceptical view with holocaust denial is not the way to convince folks of good faith, really, really, really not. And that’s now become practically standard.
If one wants to re-configure the World’s whole economy and blight every bit of moorland with fugly and marginal windfarms, a very solid case really should be made.
The IPCC’s work, dodgy hockey sticks and iffy proxies et al… and the way they have handled sceptical enquiry, just isn’t convincing enough; especially given their budget.
That’s without all this cap-and-trade carbon indulgences idea thrown in. Like some kind of mega ponziesque business scam…it reeks, it’s positively rancid. A veritable charter for corruption, the makings of a gargantuan trans-national quango, set-up to create a whole new tax-payer-funded class of international civil servants, German sedan driving adminstators and executive jetting iffy Goresque entrepreneurs. No wonder many are sceptical.
Back to the science. Give me both sides of the argument and I will make my judgment. I’m not finding the climate alarmists very convincing at all. Indeed very considerably less so that a few months ago, since I’ve started to make the effort to start to drill into it.
Now the post above of yours is fair in itself, and as ever is very well written; but, it’s a bit like looking at a landscape through a straw! Could you perhaps suggest a recently published book or journal, or other source that makes the case cogently, and addresses the major critiques, without amounting to ‘Believe it because the IPCC says so’?
ta
Nick
Saturday 13 March 2010 at 03:08 UTC
Slightly pished, and soon off to bed, but here goes…
“Malfeasance”? Good heavens, Nick, you make it seem as if they’ve been caught doing unnatural things with domestic animals!
As for Phil Jones, having worked for a decade as a research scientist, I know all too well that the profession is filled with very human beings, and that even the most decent and honest of people can sometimes act in a less than 100% professional manner.
My impression is that you’ve been spending too much time immersed in ranty political blogs and suchlike, some of which, like the comments box over at Harry’s Place, read like a parody of a Charlie Brooker sketch.
The hockey stick graph is entirely sound, and the dendrochronology proxies on which it is based are the best way we have of reconstructing pre-historical temperatures. The problem has to do with politics and communication, not the science.
If you want to understand the science, you could purchase a subscription to Nature, and/or follow the detailed discussions (and vigorous debate!) over at realclimate.org. The evidence is overwhelming, and is being added to on a weekly basis.
In my more misanthropic moments I ask myself why I care. After all, I’m a middle-aged divorced man with no children, and will be dead before the middle of the century. But I happen to think that modern, bourgeois human society has something going for it, and perhaps it is actually worth preserving. And, soft bugger that I am, I’m also somewhat uneasy about large-scale human suffering and social upheaval.
With all due respect, Nick, I don’t see you as being qualified to make a judgement on atmospheric physics and chemistry. Just like I’m unqualified to comment on, say, neurophysiology. So I trust those who understand the things I don’t, and refrain from passing negative judgement on them unless they are shown conclusively to be in error. With climate science there is no serious challenge to the near-consensus view. What we have instead is bluster and rhetoric.
Saturday 13 March 2010 at 11:39 UTC
Nature routinely uses the heavily loaded term ‘denier’; which makes it rather I difficult to even start off with an assumption of good faith.
Anyway something is definitely odd with the Mann hockey stick chart, even on the face of it.
Compare the 1990 IPPC chart versus the 2001 IPCC temp chart – the Mann famous/ infamous hockey stick .
What happened between the 2? Where did the medieval warming period go, where did the little ice age go?
Maybe I missed something.
Saturday 13 March 2010 at 16:21 UTC
“When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors , shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the actions that follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
“People who see their lives as irremediably spoiled cannot find a worth-while purpose in self-advancement…Their innermost craving is for a new life – a rebirth – or failing this, a chance to acquire new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a sense of purpose and worth by an identification with a holy cause. An active mass movement offers them opportunities for both…”
“ It is true that in the early adherents of a mass movement there are also adventurers who join in the hope that that the movement will give a spin to their wheel of fortune and whirl them to fame and power.”
Eric Hoffer, 1951 – “The True Believer – Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements”
Saturday 13 March 2010 at 18:28 UTC
Nick – I routinely use the term “denier”, along with “sceptic”, as there is a spectrum of political opinion that takes it both these types. Nature‘s use of the term “denier” is perfectly in order, and I fully respect the journal’s robust editorial stance on this matter.
As for the temperature change graphs, you’re comparing apples and oranges, as the scientific understanding of the global temperature record has developed enormously since 1990. The 2001 graph is the best global average and running mean fit. The Mediaeval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were not global phenomena. Again, this has been discussed ad nauseam, including in the IPCC Third Assessment Report, and I’m not going to use my time rehashing the arguments.
Saturday 13 March 2010 at 21:08 UTC
This is a deadly serious topic close to my heart and I thank you Francis for keeping a compelling angle on the issues. So I apologise in advance for the next post that is a mere frivolous comment that I cannot resist humour …
Saturday 13 March 2010 at 21:09 UTC
The denier has its standard based in nature, a single strand of silk is one denier.
“source wikipedia”
Saturday 13 March 2010 at 21:33 UTC
Sanity hanging by a thread?
Saturday 13 March 2010 at 22:17 UTC
>The Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were not global phenomena. <
So this year we have as a one off the coldest Winter in a generation – in Saskatchewan, Surrey and Seoul. Yet, during the medieval warming period there were a goodly few generations cultivating grain crops in Greenland and vines in England….and it was just a local phenomenon.
Sorry Francis….Bollocks!
Sunday 14 March 2010 at 13:40 UTC
Climate is not the same as weather. A cold winter (or a few cold winters in a row) is irrelevant, even where it occurs on different continents. And the Mediaeval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were regional phenomena. That is what the data show.
Tuesday 16 March 2010 at 19:47 UTC
Nick Good – the difference between the 1990 and the 2001 charts is that the former was basically cobbled together for the report from dodgy data, if not none at all, and was a best guess. The latter was the result of several people working for a while to find and put together, based on numerous strands of actual real world evidence, and has been confirmed by multiple other sources since then.
Basically, science advances and improves. So relying upon a single chart from 1990 to make your case indicates that you have no case at all.
Also the cold winter here has nothing to do with longer term climate change. Greenland is at least as warm as it was back in Viking times, except that there’s no evidence from elsewhere on the planet showing that the entire planet was awarm, whereas nowadays we have these things called satellites which show a huge amount of warming everywhere except the places you expect it to warm more slowly.
(Such as Antarctica)
Wednesday 17 March 2010 at 21:55 UTC
I went and found a copy of the 1990 report in the library.
Figure 7.1 is labelled “Schematic diagram of global temperature variations since the Pleistocene on three time scales”
Moreover it also says
“The dotted line nominally represents conditions near the beginning of the 20th century.”
That is, a time at least half a degree cooler than now. Moreover it is not referenced to any study of temperature proxies and therefore is not really valid. Hence MBH 1998.