Plimer - Chapter 3 - THE SUN

Earlier.

As promised, here are some more gems from Ian Plimer:

"The Sun is the primary driving force of climate. The Sun provides Earth with a staggering amount of energy. It drives weather, ocean currents and evaporation and provides the energy for life on Earth. The Sun also prevents the oceans freezing or boiling.

Global warming occurs on other planets and moons in our Solar System. It cannot be related to human emissions of CO2 on Earth. Planets orbiting stars outside our Solar System also show global warming resulting from orbital variations and changes in energy emitted from the parent star.

Very slight changes in solar energy output have a profound effect on the Earth's climate. An energetic Sun blasts away cosmic radiation, there is less low-level cloud, and the planet reflects less energy back into space. The surface clouds which reflect energy back into space and the surface of Earth cools. This phenomenon has been calculated and validated by experiments and observations. Clouds are the engine of weather. The Earth also has a variable flux of galactic cosmic rays.

Candidates for climate drivers are the variable Sun (solar driver), planetary perturbations (Malankovitch forcing) and variable cosmic ray flux (comic ray forcing). The effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere piggy-backs on the principal drivers of climate and may amplify changes.

The solar driving and comic ray forcing of climate are seen globally on geological, arhaeological, historical and modern time scales. The solar cycles of 11, 22, 87, 210 and 1500 years have been detected in ice sheets, ice melting, floods, droughts, lake sediments, deep sea sediments, cave deposits, boreholes, tree rings, pollen, peat and floating organisms in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere. There is no relationship between atmospheric CO2 and temperature over time.

The 23 climate models of the IPCC ignore or minimise the role of the Sun. All the models failed to predict cooling in the early 21st Century. None of the models predicted El Nino-La Nina events which transfer huge amounts of energy around the planet's surface." (pg. 100-101)

And another:

"Every second [emphasis mine], the Sun delivers to Earth the total amount of energy released by an earthquake of Richter magnitude 8. The amount of energy humans use annually is deliver from the Sun to Earth in one hour. The known recoverable resource of oil contains the energy that the Sun delivers to the Earth in 36 hours." (pg. 101) [emphasis mine]

Dr. Fruitfly should stick to genetics and leave the earth sciences to earth scientists.

"We are all very much aware that it is hotter in the blazing sunshine than when there is cloud cover. We also know that in the humid tropics, summer air temperature is much lower than in deserts at higher latitudes where the air is dry. The maximum temperatures recorded on Earth are in deserts at mid latitudes, not in the tropics." (pg. 101)

Saskboy should take note. When CO2 concentrations are high, plant life flourishes.

To go on:

"We also know that in the humid winter tropical night is far warmer than a winter night in the dry desert at the same latitude. How many of us have camped out in the desert, frying during the day and freezing at night because because of the dry air and lack of cloud cover? It is clear that clouds and humidity combined with the energy emitted by the Sun affect air temperature. Clouds reflect radiated heat from the Sun back into space. This causes the planet to cool. It was thought that clouds were caused by climate change but measurements, calculations and experiments now show that cosmic radiation forms clouds. Clouds are one of the major drivers of climate change." (pg. 101)

"However, there are other external influences that affect climate on the Earth. These are the passage of the Solar System through our galaxy. This results in Earth acquiring variable amounts of space junk (mainly dust) and being bombarded by variable amounts of galactic cosmic rays from supernova explosions." (pg. 101)

There is a lot of highly technical information in Chapter 3 of Plimer's book, but I'll quote just four of them, for the scientifically-handicapped easily-exploited dupes among us:

"Meteors buzz around in space before they fall to Earth. When in space they are bombarded by cosmic rays which create new radioactive isotopes in the meteor. Titanium 44 (Ti44) is one of these isotopes. The beauty of this technique is that the Ti44 formed in space is unaffected by processes that occurred on Earth. By measuring the amount of Ti44 in meteorites that have fallen to Earth over the last 240 years, the cosmic ray activity was plotted against solar activity and it was shown that the Sun's activity has increased over the last 100 years." (pg. 111)

"The number of cosmic particles hitting Earth changes with the changing magnetic activity of the Sun. The Sun operates as a cosmic gatekeeper blasting away the cosmic rays with solar particles and providing a shielding magnetic field through which most cosmic rays cannot penetrate. During periods of high solar activity, the cosmic particles are blasted away, less low-level clouds form and there is global warming." (page 112)

And:

"The solar constant, the energy coming from the Sun, is not a constant. Satellite measures since 1979 and sunspot activity show that the solar constant is not constant. The IPCC claims that the variation in the solar constant is less than 0.1% and concludes that it has no impact on climate compared to the effect of CO2. This claim is misleading because the 0.1% variation does not refer to the complete difference between the maximum and minimum. If this is considered, the variation is 0.22%. Changes over long periods may be three to five times the measured variation. Furthermore, a very slight variation in any complex multicomponent system can have a profound effect. The seven-year solar constant variation of 0.22% equates to surface temperature variation on Earth of 0.45 degrees C. Any temperature increase at the Earth's surface may be purely due to solar changes.

Total solar irradiance reconstructed for the period 1900-1980 and two different satellite composites (ACRIM and PMOD) that measured total solar irradiance can be used to show 20th Century climate histories. By these methods it was calculated that the Sun contributed to some 46-49% of the global warming of the Earth and, considering that there are uncertainties of 20-30%, the Sun may have been responsible for as much as 60% of the 20th Century temperature increase.

The climate modelling community has vastly underestimated the role of the Sun. The energy balance models they use produce estimates of solar-induces warming over this period that are two to ten times lower than was actually found." (pg. 122)[emphasis mine]

And the killer:

"Over geological time, there is no observed relationship between global climate and atmospheric CO2.  At times, CO2 was up to 25 times higher than at present.  At times, temperature was up to 10 degrees C higher than at present.  There were times when both temperature and CO2 were high and there were times when temperature was high and the atmospheric CO2 was low. [emphasis mine]

The time scale is not accurate enough over geological time to determine whether temperature drove the increase in DO2, as is seen from ice cores covering the last 800,000 years.  Even in modern times, there is no relationship between temperature and CO2 yet a close relationship between temperature and solar activity. The obvious question arises: If climate is unrelated to atmospheric CO2 over the last 545 Ma [Ed: million years], then how can today's climate be related to atmospheric CO2?" (pg. 130)

Stay tuned. Chapter 4 is up next.