Sun not CO2 the culprit

I'm also a geologist and, although I do not do climate research, I can accept the conclusions of climate scientists because I know they operate within the same system that I do. That's a widely dispersed network of competing individual and small team investigators submitting their findings for peer-reviewed publication. If the findings pass review and are not overturned by subsequent research, then I can have confidence in their accuracy. That is the state of climate science today - a broad consensus of how greenhouse gas emissions are effecting global climate. If you have research findings that contradict these conclusions, you should submit them for publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Be forewarned, those are hard yards - much more difficult than simply sitting on the sidelines shouting at those in the game.

The site is skepticalscience.com and it is run by John Cook from Queensland, Australia. Prof Mann (who has never been discredited) works at the Pennsylvania State University in the USA. Once again, you are spreading misinformation.

Educate yourself with credible information (yes, that's the peer-reviewed kind, not opinions from the contrarian blogosphere) and stop spreading misinformation. Once you understand the situation clearly, you (hopefully) will be more willing to make changes in your lifestyle. If enough of us make these changes, we may be able to mitigate some of the future climate change. At the same time, you should start thinking about what you will do to adapt to the global changes that are already unavoidable, including warmer climate, the rise of sea levels, and ocean acidification. If you are unwilling or unable to accept this, you are making a bad situation worse.

www.scepticalscience.com is the mouthpiece of the discredited 'Piltdown' Mann and his gang.

Correlation is not causation. Even the correlation is not very good.

Unless you go back to a couple of papers published in the 1800s in a journal of philosophy, there is not a single paper that proves that carbon dioxide causes global warming. The physics is debateable. Most emphasis has been put on radiation and not enough on convection and conduction. Furthermore, ice cores show that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide follow rather than precede warming. Mere common sense suggests that the oceans will de-gas when warmed and the physiology of organisms both photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic will be accelerated with warming. The physiology of almost every organism on the face of this planet, all influenced by light, heat, moisture and food supply, cannot be modelled any more than you or I can walk from Auckland to Sydney.  The models on which you and others set so much importance are prepared by by physical climatologists whose limits in mathematics have been clearly demonstrated and whose grasp and understanding of the physiology of the biosphere is negligeable. Furthermore the academic dishonesty, so recently demonstrated, of those who have cornered the field of climatology has made most of the peer reviewed papers worth no more that the paper on which they are printed.[Abridged]

bensan-
You, and the author of the original article, David Ivory, are entitled to your opinions. However, both of you are woefully ill-informed when it comes to the reality of global change in response to accelerating greenhouse gas emissions by humans. You would do well to educate yourselves by reading the peer-reviewed science on these matters that is freely available at the several links I have provided previously on this thread.

Dr Palin,
Your position, stated again and again, is that peer-reviewed papers show that CO2 is increasing and that humans cause this. Now you add "ignore that at your peril".
Ignore? OK.
I spend $70 per week on food.
I use about 45kg of gas per month (in winter), less in summer.
I use about 40 litres of diesel fuel a fortnight for a work vehicle.
My electricity spend is about $150 per month.
What should I do to achieve a significant reduction in consequential CO2 emission? Am I being profligate? I challenge you to get out of your ivory tower and show me how I can modify my lifestyle to significantly reduce those emissions. Where is your limit of what is acceptable per person as a target? If we take the target of 20% reduction, then I would not be willing to do that. It would make life unnecessarily hard and would achieve nothing. Therein lies the problem with your advocacy.

When considering the total area of the Earth that is covered by land and taking in consideration the relatively small number of people occupying that land who may have some influence on the climate, the reality is the money we are being charged to make a difference to this climate or weather is the biggest nonsense that has been dreamed up by all who support this scheme. We are totally powerless to influence this - nature decides when and where it is going to happen. When hundreds of people die as a result of extremely cold temperatures in Peru, and many as a result of great deluges, we must, according to these scientists, be responsible. It is time for all who support this to get a reality check.

Roger-
Yes, the universe is a complex and fascinating place. As humans, we seek to know how it works. Scientists seek this understanding across many scales and with different means of analysis, but always by questioning and collecting data. When many different bits of information come together from many different sources to yield a coherent story, we can have confidence that we are on the right track to an accurate understanding. This is the case with modern climate science. Ignore these facts at your own peril.

I am, or was, a geologist and not a physicist or chemist. My reasons for doubting the models rest partly on the difficulties of modeling groundwater flow and earth resistivity. As more factors are introduced to the problem the sooner is the problem of 'equivalence' to be confronted. If you know the thickness and resistivity of any number of extensive layers in the ground you can calculate the voltage between any two points on the surface when current is applied at two points elsewhere. You can calculate the thickness and resistivity of two or three layers readily from the electrical potential on the surface. As the number of layers increase so to do the number of alternative combinations of layer thickness and resistivity which will give the same potential distribution on the surface. This is the problem of equivalence. The mathematics in earth resistivity is exactly the same as in heat flow. The equation is the same.
I see modeling of the climate as a problem with a large and unknown number of variables, few of which can be described numerically. The problem of equivalence is immediate and overwhelming.
Furthermore, the flows of carbon dioxide into and out of the system are largely controlled by the physiology of organisms, both marine and terrestrial, beyond the scope and interest of the physical climatologist.
As a geologist I have some interest and knowledge of the organic and inorganic forms of carbon within the lithosphere and how these have changed with time.
In my view, in the light of the above, historical and geological precedent is likely to give use the best insight into the matter.

Every paper is written on the basis of very
limited perspective. It may even be true that none of these papers are
falsifiable on the basis of the data that they have used. That, however,
does not mean that a synthesis of these papers is correct. The
number of factors influencing climate is likely to exceed the number of
papers written. Another issue is the interaction between the physical
phenomena and the biological phenomena. A physicist may well understand
heat transfer in terms of thermodynamics. He is likely to claim that
physics has all the answers. He will be wrong, as will all the others for
the same reason.

bensan-
You are confusing climate with weather. Climate is weather integrated over many years and consequently many seasonal cycles. A few cold days in winter does not negate the warming trend documented worldwide (see the latest compilation of climate data available at this link). Denying these facts is not a solution.

Now we have been informed about the facts we can feel reassured. Peru has lost hundreds of people in the worst and lowest temperatures they have ever endure. There is every indication these temperatures are going even lower but we are constantly being told we are facing increases in temperatures. Tell that to the relatives of these dead children and explain why this is happening. According to someone reacting to these issues, this is cherry picking! The reality is, there is no proof of increasing temperatures and weather, like climate, changes without human input.

David Ivory is misinformed. A comprehensive refutation of the "it's the sun" argument is provided at www.skepticalscience.com with many direct links to peer-reviewed scientific articles on the subject.

Peter, you have succeeded in providing solid evidence that you have found a web page that supports your views.

But the page at Stanford University is not, in my opinion, reputable: it looks like it was written for children and it's assertions are based on a NASA press release. Press releases and summarys for policy-makers are notoriously unreliable, and should never be a substitute for an actual piece of scientific research.

You might find the reason "Stanford University told me , so it must be true", persuasive, but it doesn't work for me.

If we accept your idea of only believing reputable institutions, the Sun would still be orbiting the earth and E would not equal mc².

David Ivory in his article gave a number of arguments to support his views; a more persuasive way of opposing his views is to address those arguments in a way that shows that you have given it some thought. I am sure that you can do this.

This, in my opinion, is rather tiresome nonsense. Shall we just see what a more reputable institution has to say on the matter? Say, Stanford University's Solar Centre? (http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/glob-warm.html)

I quote:
"Solar variability certainly plays a minor role, but it looks like only a quarter of the recent variations can be attributed to the Sun. At most. [...] Solar irradiance changes have been measured reliably by satellites for only 30 years. These precise observations show changes of a few tenths of a percent that depend on the level of activity in the 11-year solar cycle.[...]

While a component of recent global warming may have been caused by the increased solar activity of the last solar cycle, that component was very small compared to the effects of additional greenhouse gases."