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July 15, 2007

The Sun matters!

James Lewis
An odd little dance is going on in Britain, where the forces of Politically Correct Science are defending their fast-losing cause in real climate science. The question is, incredibly, "Does the Sun matter in climate change?"

David Whitehouse is probably to the top science correspondent in the UK, helped by the fact that he is a real scientist. (The others are political and media hacks, who are just afraid to buck the trendy Global Warming lobby).
As an astronomer, Whitehouse is aware that the sun is the major "forcing factor," to use a favorite term of the Warmers, in earth climate. Period. But last week, the Proceedings of the Royal Society published a statistical study claiming that Mr. Sun was not responsible for recent warming. Trouble is, Dr. Whitehouse points out, that there is no evidence for any warming in the last ten years!

He writes in the Telegraph today,
"Last week's research is a simple piece of science and fundamentally flawed. Nobody looked beyond the hype; if they had, they would have reached a different conclusion.
...

Recently the United States' National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration said that 2006 was statistically indistinguishable from previous years.

Looking at annual global temperatures, it is apparent that the last decade shows no warming trend and recent successive annual global temperatures are well within each year's measurement errors. Statistically the world's temperature is flat. (Italics added)

The world certainly warmed between 1975 and 1998, but in the past 10 years it has not been increasing at the rate it did. No scientist could honestly look at global temperatures over the past decade and see a rising curve."
So first of all, there was no detectable warming in the last ten years, beyond chance variation. Ooops.

Second, Mr. Sun matters after all.
"The sun is by far the single most powerful driving force on our climate, and the fact is we do not understand how it affects us as much as some think we do."
What about the Hype Machine?

David Whitehouse is pretty clear about that, too:
"The BBC was enthusiastically one-sided, sloppy and confused on its website, using concepts such as the sun's power, output and magnetic field incorrectly and interchangeably, as well as not including any criticism of the research."
Which is interesting, because David Whitehouse was for many years the top Science Correspondent of BBC News. Today he calls it the "evangelical BBC." 

I'm not sure if real evangelicals should accept that, givent hat the BBC has turned into a mendacious agitprop machine.

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