Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: A new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun's output cannot be causing modern-day climate change. It shows that for the last 20 years, the Sun's output has declined, yet temperatures on Earth have risen. It also shows that modern temperatures are not determined by the Sun's effect on cosmic rays, as has been claimed. Writing in the Royal Society's journal Proceedings A, the researchers say cosmic rays may have affected climate in the past, but not the present. "This should settle the debate," said Mike Lockwood, from the UK's Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, who carried out the new analysis together with Claus Froehlich from the World Radiation Center in Switzerland. Dr Lockwood initiated the study partially in response to the TV documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, broadcast on Britain's Channel Four earlier this year, which featured the cosmic ray hypothesis. "All the graphs they showed stopped in about 1980, and I knew why, because things diverged after that," he told the BBC News website. "You can't just ignore bits of data that you don't like," he said. The scientists' main approach on this new analysis was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature, which has risen by about 0.4C over the period. The Sun varies on a cycle of about 11 years between periods of high and low activity. But that cycle comes on top of longer-term trends; and most of the 20th Century saw a slight but steady increase in solar output. However, in about 1985, that trend appears to have reversed, with solar output declining. Yet this period has seen temperatures rise as fast as - if not faster than - any time during the previous 100 years.
View: Full Article | Source: BBC News
This could be bad.
