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Is the sun a constant source of energy?

The sun’s radiation varies over many time scales, from short (11 year sunspot cycle, 20-27 year magnetic field) to medium (106 and 216 year cycles) to long (tens of thousands of years). Northern hemisphere temperature variations over the last 200 years closely match estimated solar intensity, as one would expect. (George Taylor, ‘Science Wake Up Call: There is More Hype Than Truth,’ National Association of Manufacturers, May 2004)

Is CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas?

Not even close. Most of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapour, which is about 100 times as abundant in the atmosphere as CO2 and thus has a much larger effect.

Has the climate been stable for a long time but now getting increasingly extreme?

Climate swings are nothing new. Between 800 and 1300 AD – The Medieval Warm Period – much of the world was several degrees warmer than today. People grew wine grapes in England, figs in Germany and assorted crops in Greenland. Then came the Little Ice Age, with temperatures considerably colder than today which persisted until the climate warmed again around 1900. The likely cause? Changes in the sun’s energy output, or perhaps the Earth’s orbit, say Harvard-Smithsonian scientists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon.

Is the sun a constant source of energy?

The sun’s radiation varies over many time scales, from short (11 year sunspot cycle, 20-27 year magnetic field) to medium (106 and 216 year cycles) to long (tens of thousands of years). Northern hemisphere temperature variations over the last 200 years closely match estimated solar intensity, as one would expect. (George Taylor, ‘Science Wake Up Call: There is More Hype Than Truth,’ National Association of Manufacturers, May 2004)

Is CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas?

Not even close. Most of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapour, which is about 100 times as abundant in the atmosphere as CO2 and thus has a much larger effect.

Has the climate been stable for a long time but now getting increasingly extreme?

Climate swings are nothing new. Between 800 and 1300 AD – The Medieval Warm Period – much of the world was several degrees warmer than today. People grew wine grapes in England, figs in Germany and assorted crops in Greenland. Then came the Little Ice Age, with temperatures considerably colder than today which persisted until the climate warmed again around 1900. The likely cause? Changes in the sun’s energy output, or perhaps the Earth’s orbit, say Harvard-Smithsonian scientists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon.

Quoted for truth.

Thank you

A question for the skeptic types: is it better to make some minor changes now to reduce the possible effects if it is proven true or is it better to keep doing what we're doing and end up having to make much larger changes down the road if it turns out to be true?

Is it that hard to check out wikipedia before quoting a study by astrophysicists who got paid by the oil industry? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soon_and_Baliunas_controversy

Is the sun a constant source of energy?

The sun’s radiation varies over many time scales, from short (11 year sunspot cycle, 20-27 year magnetic field) to medium (106 and 216 year cycles) to long (tens of thousands of years). Northern hemisphere temperature variations over the last 200 years closely match estimated solar intensity, as one would expect. (George Taylor, ‘Science Wake Up Call: There is More Hype Than Truth,’ National Association of Manufacturers, May 2004)

Is CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas?

Not even close. Most of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapour, which is about 100 times as abundant in the atmosphere as CO2 and thus has a much larger effect.

Has the climate been stable for a long time but now getting increasingly extreme?

Climate swings are nothing new. Between 800 and 1300 AD – The Medieval Warm Period – much of the world was several degrees warmer than today. People grew wine grapes in England, figs in Germany and assorted crops in Greenland. Then came the Little Ice Age, with temperatures considerably colder than today which persisted until the climate warmed again around 1900. The likely cause? Changes in the sun’s energy output, or perhaps the Earth’s orbit, say Harvard-Smithsonian scientists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon.

That does change the fact that increased levels of CO2 has a huge impact on the climate. Basicly nothing by a smoke screen.

Increased levels of CO2 => higher tempurature => more water vapour => much higher tempuratures.

A question for the skeptic types: is it better to make some minor changes now to reduce the possible effects if it is proven true or is it better to keep doing what we're doing and end up having to make much larger changes down the road if it turns out to be true?

Well, what changes to we have to make? Aside from maybe eating less beef, we have to stop burning fossil fuels, which we have to do anyway since there is only so much oil in the ground. There really is no excuse for not acting immediately. We are like the junkie who always wants to get clean tomorrow, after that one last binge.

A question for the skeptic types: is it better to make some minor changes now to reduce the possible effects if it is proven true or is it better to keep doing what we're doing and end up having to make much larger changes down the road if it turns out to be true?

It would be better if we focused our attention on the real threat to our planet.

Thirty years ago I was taught about the destruction of the rain forests and the threat to the earth’s resources of an ever increasing human population. The world population continues to increase – it is 7 billion today and is predicted to be 9.1 billion in 2050. This is clearly the greatest threat to our planet and the environment but is never mentioned by the man made global warming believers. Sir David Attenborough, Britain’s best-known natural history film-maker, described the growth in human numbers as ‘frightening’ and urged environmental organisations to ‘spell out loud and clear’ the problems caused by population growth. ‘I’ve seen wildlife under mounting human pressure all over the world and it’s not just from human economy or technology – behind every threat is the frightening explosion in human numbers.’

If human numbers continue to increase the inconvenient truth is that our planet will one day in the not too distant future resemble Easter Island.

One other difficult point I have heard made - to enable every person living on earth to have the same standard of living as an average UK citizen would require 3.5 earths. This is a very difficult square to circle, there simply aren't enough resources on earth to provide the lifestyle so many around the globe strive for and so many others wish to deliver to them.

Billy Connolly has a solution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZzXWrW-_Ps

That does change the fact that increased levels of CO2 has a huge impact on the climate. Basicly nothing by a smoke screen.

Increased levels of CO2 => higher tempurature => more water vapour => much higher tempuratures.

Christopher Monckton has written; ‘Humankind is altering the composition of the atmosphere. This statement is uncontroversial: for measurement has established that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen over the past 250 years to such an extent that CO2 now constitutes almost 0.01 per cent more of the atmosphere than in the pre-industrial era. However, on the question whether that alteration has any detrimental climatic significance, there is no consensus, is that what all the fuss is really about? 0.01% over 250 years.’ If Monckton is right one has to ask how powerful is CO2 to enable it to cause all this threatened world wide chaos by an increase in it of only 0.01% in 250 years?

Quoted for truth.

Thank you

except is only half the truth and deliberately misleading.

More on the quality research in the documentary.

The film introduced Professor Wunsch by describing his current and previous
academic affiliations. He was then shown talking about how the oceans
release carbon dioxide as they warm.
He told the Observer: “I explained that warming the ocean was damaging
because it will release more carbon dioxide. They used it to claim that
carbon dioxide is all natural.” He added: “I could forgive someone not
understanding the issues. This seems like a deliberate attempt to exploit
someone.

This guy is as skeptical as it gets btw

Now to me, this is a rather interesting story from a public understanding of science perspective, because what defines Wunsch is that he is a man who has always been critical of hysteria on both sides of the debate, specifically criticising, for example, that slightly childish BBC program where the world froze over as a result of the evils of mankind. He is somebody who openly and honestly questions certainty and hysteria, whilst still clearly coming down on the side of man made climate change, but his very sceptical and critical approach to the evidence has been, as far as I can see, hijacked, to portray him as someone who is a friend of the climate “sceptics”, “dissidents”, or “denialists”.

http://www.badscience.net/2007/03/insert-swindle-gag-here/

I've only seen people mentioning problems with greenhouse gases, but they are not the only issue. Pollution is killing the ocean. There's a huge clump of trash the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean and it's making the acidity levels of the water very high. It's literally dissolving calcium based life forms like mollusks and the like. The Great Barrier Reef is disappearing by the minute. This is making an over abundance of jelly fish which is also wreaking havoc on things like plankton. More relevant to climate change, higher acidity --> higher temperatures. Which also means damaging storms, melting of the ice, etc.

98% of scientists agree climate change is real. The only people I've heard say different are politicians, news commentators, and other people not qualified to give an opinion. The science community has some of the most intelligent people on Earth. I don't know why anyone would ignore them.

For all you it's the sun cycle people...

The film's main contention is that the current increase in global temperatures is caused not by rising greenhouse gases, but by changes in the activity of the sun. It is built around the discovery in 1991 by the Danish atmospheric physicist Dr Eigil Friis-Christensen that recent temperature variations on Earth are in "strikingly good agreement" with the length of the cycle of sunspots.

Unfortunately, he found nothing of the kind. A paper published in the journal Eos in 2004 reveals that the "agreement" was the result of "incorrect handling of the physical data". The real data for recent years show the opposite: that the length of the sunspot cycle has declined, while temperatures have risen. When this error was exposed, Friis-Christensen and his co-author published a new paper, purporting to produce similar results. But this too turned out to be an artefact of mistakes - in this case in their arithmetic.

So Friis-Christensen and another author developed yet another means of demonstrating that the sun is responsible, claiming to have discovered a remarkable agreement between cosmic radiation influenced by the sun and global cloud cover. This is the mechanism the film proposes for global warming. But, yet again, the method was exposed as faulty. They had been using satellite data which did not in fact measure global cloud cover. A paper in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics shows that, when the right data are used, a correlation is not found.

So the hypothesis changed again. Without acknowledging that his previous paper was wrong, Friis-Christensen's co-author, Henrik Svensmark, declared there was a correlation - not with total cloud cover but with "low cloud cover". This, too, turned out to be incorrect.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/mar/13/science.media

it continues...

The film also maintains that manmade global warming is disproved by conflicting temperature data. Professor John Christy speaks about the discrepancy he discovered between temperatures at the Earth's surface and temperatures in the troposphere (or lower atmosphere). But the programme fails to mention that in 2005 his data were proved wrong, by three papers in Science magazine.

Christy himself admitted last year that he was mistaken. He was one of the authors of a paper which states the opposite of what he says in the film. "Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human-induced global warming. Specifically, surface data showed substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected."

Until recently, when found to be wrong, scientists went back to their labs to start again. Now, emboldened by the denial industry, some of them, like the film-makers, shriek "censorship!". This is the best example of manufactured victimhood I have come across. If you demonstrate someone is wrong, you are now deemed to be silencing him.

But there is one scientist in the film whose work has not been debunked: the oceanographer Carl Wunsch. He appears to support the idea that increasing carbon dioxide is not responsible for rising global temperatures. Wunsch says he was "completely misrepresented" by the programme, and "totally misled" by the people who made it.

I don't know what all this grapes growing in England nonsense is about. I grew up in Buffalo, NY one of the more colder places in this country. They have many vineyards around Buffalo and supply Welches grape juice with much of their grapes. That's because people grow grapes in the summer, not the winter. Duh!

Science: http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/leasthelpful/15125849459/1/tumblr_lx3pocJzF41r7mymo