"Sam Wormley" wrote in message
...
What's going on with the Sun?
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/46387

"Earlier this month a lot of column inches were devoted to the news that
the Sun continues to behave in a peculiar manner – and that solar activity
could be about to enter a period of extended calm. The story emerged after
three groups of researchers presented independent studies at the annual
meeting of the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical
Society, which appear to support this theory. But are the new findings
really that clear-cut and what implications do they have for the climate
here on Earth?

"Finally, even if the Sun were to head into a quiet period, others argue
that the reduction in solar irradiance on Earth would still be small
compared with the heating caused by man-made global warming. Mike
Lockwood, a researcher at the University of Reading, estimates that the
change in climate radiative forcing since the Maunder minimum is about one
tenth of the change caused by man-made trace greenhouse gases".

They are only looking at the current solar cycle. There could be other
cycles unknown because their periods might be thousands of years, and one of
those cycles could be causing heating here on this planet. I don't see how
anyone can say for certain that global warming exists because of man since
truly accurate records have only been kept for the last couple of hundred
years. It's like trying to sample a very small diced sized piece of
something that was originally the size of the sun and saying that the dice's
composition resembles the larger object. Now if you had 100 small samples,
then you might get closer to the larger object's actual composition. The
same as if you had 100 reliable record kept climatology periods of earth's
history, from different time periods of over say several million years, you
then might be able to make predictions about future climate, but basing
findings on one period only (the last 100- 200 years), makes for
inconclusive findings and therefore a weak example of the scientific method.


See: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/46387