Global Warming is True – But it’s Not All Caused by Greenhouse Gases

Who cares?
Climate change follows global warming, and climate change is a big controversy. For example, a lot of people in the oil and gas industry, where I worked for 30 years, don’t believe in climate change, or don’t want to. This is because the industry is responsible for 50% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that supposedly cause climate change.

Also, President Trump doesn’t believe in climate change, and he is against wind power and is neutral about solar power renewables. This is short-sighted because in the last two years over 90% of new electricity in the US was provided by wind or solar farms. His Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, says electricity from wind and solar are not stable enough. Wright doesn’t realize that huge, grid-scale batteries are solving the stability problem, especially in Australia where one state gets 75% of its electricity from wind and solar and batteries.

Unfortunately, the US government is shooting itself in the foot because there is a great need for new electricity to run data centers and AI (Artificial Intelligence). The government is trying to increase electricity in three ways: (1) resurrecting old coal power plants and nuclear reactors, both of which have serious biproducts that are harmful to humans, (2) building new gas-fired power plants, which are expensive and emit GHG, and (3) throwing money at smaller, modular nuclear power plants, some the size of a refrigerator, which are too expensive, and also at geothermal wells which are unproven commercially and also too expensive.

Trump’s push for more fossil energies in (1) and (2) will maintain the US as the second largest emitter of GHG in the world (the biggest emitter is China). To avoid blame, you can hide and say you don’t believe in climate change – while China and Australia become the clean green capitals of the world. The wins and losses of Trump’s electricity emergency can be assessed in a new book.

Personal Sidebar.
My PhD was on cosmic rays that travel from sun to earth. These cosmic rays are emitted by large solar flares that occur near sunspots. So I learned a lot about the sun and its activity, as well as the magnetic field of the sun that pervades interplanetary space. And I learned about the Maunder Minimum of 1700 A.D. when there were no sunspots on the surface of the sun, and the earth was in a deep freeze. I understood that in times past, the sun’s activity did exert control over earth’s temperature – way before man-made greenhouse gases (GHG) appeared.

I’ve always puzzled as to why most climate scientists say that GHG are responsible for global warming, and the suns activity can be neglected. It’s just not true, as I explain below. If you are not technically minded, you may want to jump to the ending of this article. Meanwhile I will continue with a story that has turned out to be quite fascinating…

On the other hand, if you love this stuff, you can easily link to the larger article in Forbes.com, which has more details, or you can access the same Forbes article in my website.

What is Global Warming?
Global warming is the steady temperature increase as measured by thermometers across the world. Figure 1 shows one result by merging land and ocean data at Berkeley, California. The temperature has gone straight up since 1960, and the accepted cause is enhanced release of worldwide GHG, as shown by Figure 2.

Global warming leads to heat waves, obviously. Canada, Australia, and Europe have had some doozies in recent years. But does global warming cause the big disasters: droughts, wildfires, hurricanes and cloudburst flooding (the so-called 4 killer extreme weather events)? The short answer is no, but we won’t get into this here.

So what happened before 1960, when GHG emissions were virtually non-existent?
The global temperature has been generally rising since 1600 A.D., as shown by Figure 3. But enhanced GHG didn’t exist before 1850, and had very low concentrations up to 1950. The Maunder Minimum occurred between 1660 and 1715 when the earth was in deep freeze, and there are paintings of people skating on the River Thames, for example. In this period, there were no sunspots, as discovered by the astronomer Edward Maunder.

The number of sunspots generally increased from 1600 to 1970 suggesting a relation between sunspot numbers and earth’s temperature. In fact, sunspots are indicative of magnetic activity at the surface of the sun. More magnetic activity means more radiation, light and heat, from the sun that heats the earth.

But there’s a problem. The extra radiation from the sun between 1600 and 1970 is not enough to raise the earth’s temperature from -0.6C to +0.15C in Figure 3. Satellite measurements have confirmed this

Climate scientists have wrestled with this problem for 30 years. One group, including the IPCC, a famous mouthpiece for the UN, have decided to ignore the Maunder Minimum, and begin their modeling of the data on 1750. They ignore the large temperature rise from 1600 to 1750 (about 0.5C), and dismiss this obvious solar control of earth temperature. In other words, IPCC claim solar forcing of global warming is negligible and GHG forcing is dominant. It has become a political issue, with attention focused on preventing GHG emissions, and blaming the fossil energy industry, including oil and gas, for most GHG emissions. But the Maunder Minimum is the missing link in the puzzle of global warming, and it is clearly important.

What difference will it make if solar forcing is included in climate modeling?
It may be true that GHG has been the dominant forcing mechanism since 1950, but solar forcing will continue to play a role in global warming, as it has for millions of years before human-caused GHG appeared. Glaciers retreat when earth temperatures rise, and these have been recorded by drilling wells and collecting ice cores. Over the last two thousand years, there have been several cases of glaciers retreating when the earth warms, and this verifies solar control of earth temperature.

Let’s take one scenario. If sunspot counts rise between now and the year 2100, this will cause some temperature rise, and it could be 0.4℃ to reach the peak of the Medieval Warm Period around 1000 A.D. The total temperature rise should not be attributed entirely to GHG emissions, and the fossil fuel industry should not be blamed for the whole temperature rise. But there would be a serious downside — the earth would be even hotter than current GHG predictions.

If solar forcing is included in the modeling, a better calculation of GHG temperature rise, and its critical predictions through 2100 will become available. Without solar forcing the model predictions will be flawed.

How can solar forcing be included in climate models?
Satellite data say the radiation from the sun (solar irradiance) is about 1 watt per square meter. To match the earth temperature of Figure 3, solar irradiance needs to be upscaled by about three times. Essentially, the radiation proxy calculated from sunspot numbers needs to be upscaled by three times. It has been shown that when this is done, a good match is obtained to the temperature data in Figure 3.

There are physical reasons why the sun’s radiation might be amplified in its effect on earth temperature, involving the interplanetary magnetic field or galactic cosmic rays, but these are beyond the main topic here. The essential proof of solar control is the correlation between glacier retreats and sunspots, as mentioned above. The search for the actual mechanism that upscales sunspot counts and solar irradiance needs to continue.
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Its now mid-September, the beginning of Fall in the USA.
May insights and wisdom from God assist you in this new season of your life.
The Gray Nomad.
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And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night.
And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.” [Genesis, chapter 1].