Warming not due to sunspots?
The following letter to the editor appeared in today’s Moscow-Pullman Daily News:
One of the favored tactics of global warming deniers is to trot out long-settled issues of climate science and portray them as controversial.
Walter Clark (Opinion, Jan. 2 & 3) uses evidence of the Medieval Warm Period to argue that global warming is not human-caused but rather the result of natural processes. Clark points to sunspots.
It is now widely accepted in the scientific community that the Medieval Warm Period was a regional phenomenon primarily affecting Europe. No compelling evidence has been found of warming during that period that was global in scope. The Medieval Warm Period was not likely caused by human activities, but as a mere regional climate shift is not relevant to global warming either.
Solar irradiance has been measured with high precision since the late 1970s. If Clark were right, we would see high sun-spot activity and increased solar irradiance over recent decades, when record-breaking average global temperatures have occurred. We do not. In fact, 2009 - the fifth-warmest year on record - had the lowest solar irradiance recorded since precise measurement began.
Clark's nearly weekly installments of patent nonsense appear designed primarily to confuse and to create the impression of scientific controversy where none exists.
Faced with a serious illness, you would seek out the most-knowledgeable and well-respected medical specialist you could find. You would waste no time with quacks. Why should the health of the world's climate deserve a different approach?
The real climate scientists have pegged the alarm meter; they can do no more for us. It's now time for the American people to step up and insist that Congress take the common-sense steps necessary to stabilize the world's climate.
Rob Briggs, Pullman
I’ve got bad news for Briggs: solar activity has been known for years and years to be the cause of global temperatures. There’s just something about this nuclear fusion reactor running 93 million miles away that has a direct effect on our temperature.
But there’s more than that. To demonstrate a theory, you need to have correlation, time sequence (the cause comes before the effect), and get rid of other possible causes.
The last (man is the cause) is the easiest one of all. There were temperature cycles (think of the Ice Age and how much warmer it is now; that wasn’t caused by man) and the Maunder Minimum (back around 1,000 AD it was much warmer than it is today; hence “Greenland” getting its name).
Finally, here is the correlation and time sequence between sunspots and the earth’s temperature.
No, you don’t need a PhD to figure this out. But apparently not having a PhD is actually helpful.
