Below, a kook liberal said there has been no increase in solar activity since the 1970s.

Then there's reality, which as usual, is in direct contrast to what a fraylib says:

Sun's Output Increasing in Possible Trend Fueling Global Warming
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 02:30 pm ET
20 March 2003

In what could be the simplest explanation for one component of global warming, a new study shows the Sun's radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s.

The increase would only be significant to Earth's climate if it has been going on for a century or more, said study leader Richard Willson, a Columbia University researcher also affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The Sun's increasing output has only been monitored with precision since satellite technology allowed necessary observations. Willson is not sure if the trend extends further back in time, but other studies suggest it does.

"This trend is important because, if sustained over many decades, it could cause significant climate change," Willson said.

In a NASA-funded study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, Willson and his colleagues speculate on the possible history of the trend based on data collected in the pre-satellite era.

"Solar activity has apparently been going upward for a century or more," Willson told SPACE.com today.

Significant component

Further satellite observations may eventually show the trend to be short-term. But if the change has indeed persisted at the present rate through the 20th Century, "it would have provided a significant component of the global warming the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports to have occurred over the past 100 years," he said.

That does not mean industrial pollution has not been a significant factor, Willson cautioned.

Scientists, industry leaders and environmentalists have argued for years whether humans have contributed to global warming, and to what extent. The average surface temperature around the globe has risen by about 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1880. Some scientists say the increase could be part of natural climate cycles. Others argue that greenhouse gases produced by automobiles and industry are largely to blame.

Willson said the Sun's possible influence has been largely ignored because it is so difficult to quantify over long periods.

Confounding efforts to determine the Sun's role is the fact that its energy output waxes and wanes every 11 years. This solar cycle, as it is called, reached maximum in the middle of 2000 and achieved a second peak in 2002. It is now ramping down toward a solar minimum that will arrive in about three years.

Connections

Changes in the solar cycle -- and solar output -- are known to cause short-term climate change on Earth. At solar max, Earth's thin upper atmosphere can see a doubling of temperature. It swells, and denser air can puff up to the region of space where the International Space Station orbits, causing increased drag on the ship and forcing more frequent boosts from space shuttles.

Changing Sun In 1996, near the last solar minimum, the Sun is nearly featureless. By 1999, approaching maximum, it is dotted by sunspots and fiery hot gas trapped in magnetic loops. SOURCE: ESA/NASA/SOHO/US Naval Research Laboratory

Sun Cams: See the Sun Now

Long-term: A previous study showed that changes in the Sun's output appear to be related to temperatures on Earth, based on studies of tree rings, sunspots and other data. Learn More

Solar max has also been tied to a 2 percent increase in clouds over much of the United States.

It might seem logical to assume tie climate to solar output, but firm connections are few. Other studies looking further back in time have suggested a connection between longer variations in solar activity and temperatures on Earth.

Examinations of ancient tree rings and other data show temperatures declined starting in the 13th Century, bottomed out at 2 degrees below the long-term average during the 17th Century, and did not climb back to previous levels until the late 19th Century. Separate records of sunspots, auroral activity (the Northern Lights) and terrestrial deposits of certain substances generated in atmospheric reactions triggered by solar output, suggest the Sun was persistently active prior to the onset of this Little Ice Age, as scientists call the event.

Solar activity was lowest during the 17th Century, when Earth was most frigid.

Large-scale ocean and climate variations on Earth can also mask long-term trends and can make it difficult to sort out what is normal, what is unusual, and which effects might or might not result from shifts in solar radiation.

To get above all this, scientists rely on measurements of total solar energy, at all wavelengths, outside Earth's atmosphere. The figure they derive is called Total Solar Irradiance (TSI).

Heating up

The new study shows that the TSI has increased by about 0.1 percent over 24 years. That is not enough to cause notable climate change, Willson and his colleagues say, unless the rate of change were maintained for a century or more.

On time scales as short as several days, the TSI can vary by 0.2 percent due to the number and size of sunspots crossing the face of the Sun. That shift, said to be insignificant to weather, is however equal to the total amount of energy used by humans, globally, for a year, the researchers estimate.

The study analyzed data from six satellites orbiting Earth at different times over the 24 years. Willson ferreted out errors in one of the datasets that had prevented previous studies from discovering the trend.

A separate recent study of Sun-induced magnetic activity near Earth, going back to 1868, provides compelling evidence that the Sun's current increase in output goes back more than a century, Willson said.

He said firm conclusions about whether the present changes involve a long-term trend or a relatively brief aberration should come with continued monitoring into the next solar minimum, expected around 2006.

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Greenhouse Gases, Not Solar Activity, Cause of Global Warming

KATLENBURG-LINDAU, Germany, August 3, 2004 (ENS) - Solar activity affects the climate but plays only a minor role in the current global warming, a German-Finnish team of scientists has found.

Since the middle of the last century, the Sun has been in a phase of unusually high activity, shown by frequent occurrences of sunspots, gas eruptions, and radiation storms.

The influence of the Sun on the Earth was believed to be one cause of the global warming observed since 1900, along with the emission of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, from the combustion of coal, gas, and oil.

But Professor Sami Solanki, solar physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, is not convinced that the increased activity of the Sun is responsible for global warming.

Solar physicist Dr. Sami Solanki is director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Photo courtesy MPS)He says that based on his team's research, the Sun can be responsible for, at most, only a small part of the warming over the last 20 to 30 years.

"Just how large this role is, must still be investigated," he says, "since, according to our latest knowledge on the variations of the solar magnetic field, the significant increase in the Earth’s temperature since 1980 is indeed to be ascribed to the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide."

Solanki and other researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) and at the University of Oulu in Finland reconstructed solar activity based on sunspot frequency since 850 AD.

They found that since 1940 the mean sunspot number is higher than it has ever been in the last thousand years and 2.5 times higher than the long term average, as they report in the scientific journal, "Physical Review Letters."

Then they combined historical sunspot records with measurements of the frequency of radioactive isotopes in ice cores from Greenland and the Antarctic.

In addition, the MPS scientists took the measured and calculated variations in the solar brightness over the last 150 years and compared them to the temperature of the Earth.

"Although the changes in the two values tend to follow each other for roughly the first 120 years, the Earth’s temperature has risen dramatically in the last 30 years while the solar brightness has not appreciably increased in this time," they said.

The Sun affects Earth's climate through several physical processes. For one thing, the Sun's total radiation, particularly that in the ultraviolet range, varies with solar activity.

The Sun as it appeared on August 2, 2004 (Photo courtesy European Space Agency)When many sunspots are visible, the Sun is somewhat brighter than in "quiet" times and radiates considerably more in the ultraviolet, the MPS scientists say.

On the other hand, the cosmic ray intensity entering the Earth’s atmosphere varies opposite to the solar activity, since the cosmic ray particles are deflected by the Sun’s magnetic field to a greater or lesser degree.

A model proposed by Danish researchers that has attracted much attention from solar and climate scientists says that the ions produced by cosmic rays act as condensation nuclei for larger suspension particles and so contribute to cloud formation.

With increased solar activity, and stronger magnetic fields, the Danish model shows, the cosmic ray intensity decreases, and with it the amount of cloud coverage, resulting in a rise of temperatures on the Earth. Conversely, a reduction in solar activity produces lower temperatures.

To check this idea, Dr. Solanki and fellow MPS scientist Natalie Krivova calculated the Sun’s main parameters affecting climate for the last 150 years using current measurements and the newest models.

The calculated the total radiation, the ultraviolet output, and the Sun’s magnetic field, which modulates the cosmic ray intensity.

They came to the conclusion that the variations on the Sun run parallel to climate changes for most of that time, indicating that the Sun has indeed influenced the climate in the past. Just how large this influence is, is subject to further investigation.

However, they said, "since about 1980, while the total solar radiation, its ultraviolet component, and the cosmic ray intensity all exhibit the 11-year solar periodicity, there has otherwise been no significant increase in their values. In contrast, the Earth has warmed up considerably within this time period. This means that the Sun is not the cause of the present global warming."

Now those are some credentials you can put your faith into. Senior Science Writer. That's not some pussy ass Phd in Geophysical fluid dynamics, mind you, like you might find at the U.S. Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Labratory. It's a Senior Science Writer. Probably a very well paid Senior Science Writer, with the emphasis on writer, not science. Because this Senior Science Writer speculates on subjects using zero data and only vaguely defined relationships. Where as the U.S. Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Labratory, where the opinion is that the rapid build up of CO2 is the cause of Global Climate change...they have the best data available and use highly defined mathematical models with the worlds fastest computers to test thier theories on. And while the Phd's who run the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Labratory may not be Senior Science Writers...somehow I bet they have a better idea of what they are talking about.

Something from a Cracker Jacks box?

"fraylib" is just a nicer way of saying "dumbass"

;o)

There are a LOT of sheep when it comes to buying into the "we contribute in a major way to global warming" or "there are no 'cycles', WE are responsible for everything" way of thinking.

Jen

Neither you nor I need believe one scientist or another. Simply look around your yard, year by year, and see that historic (and poetic) climate patterns are changing. Across the world, major disruptions, e.g., droughts, hurricanes, and tornados, are increasingly present and more violent.

There is enough science to know, whether the climate change is natural or manmade, that we have available tools to counteract the worst effects. We also know that humans in general and Americans in particular love a challange, rise to it, and succeed. So much more good can come from "battling the elements" that any arguments to the contrary are polemic and hardly useful.

Why is it that global warming deniers seem to be fighting for fun rather than for their children or humanity?

Who's the sheep here Jen? One who studies and bases his view on the scientific experts, or the one who buys her Senator's bizarre conspiracy theories.

A valid point, congratulations. Will you use the same standards when a pseudo-con goes against the science of global warming?

The 2000 scientists doing original research who co-authored the IPCC are "sheep" but the folks buying Exxon funded spin aren't?

But I'm coming out here and now, publicly, to say that I simple can't muster a scintilla of give-a-damn about sun spots, ozone layers, solar minimums, et. al.

Might not be the "popular" opinion, but I figure my give-a-damn only has so much RAM, so I gotta conserve.