What we do not know about the Sun and global warming

Ms. Linda Moulton Howe has posted an interesting page on the sun, ice ages, and climate at Earthfiles.com.^[1] I have no idea how accurate she is, but I am going to give her the benefit of the doubt because I like the ideas she is proposing. Yes, I am biased.

She offers two essentially unrelated facts and attempts to relate them. I have no clue how related they are. I am not really tempted to say she is necessarily right. But the facts themselves are rather interesting to me.

Of lesser interest, apparently the Sun is not obeying the predictions scientists had for it this year. Rather than having a quiet year, it has produced an unusually large sunspot. Along with this, some scientists apparently think that it has been gradually building up its energy output for a while now. What does this mean? Apparently, if Ms. Howe's presentation is accurate, we do not know. That hardly surprises me. I feel certain I have noted before examples of scientists being forced to admit that they do not know everything, but a quick search of my log reveals no easily found examples of this. This article then, if for no other reason, is noteworthy for this alone: scientists do not know how much affect the Sun's energy output could have on global warming.

Of greater interest to me, is the graph towards the bottom of the article.^[2] It shows a clear lack of simple or direct relationship between carbon dioxide levels and average global temperature. If accurate, this graph calls into question all our models of global warming and all our currently popular theories as to its causes. While some people might prefer a known wrong, and not just wrong but bad, explanation to no explanation, I prefer to say "I do not know." Such people would say that we must continue to pretend that carbon dioxide is the cause of global warming, simply because I have offered no better theory. They are wrong. It will do us no good to follow blind alleys in a vain quest for a solution to the "problem."

Which brings me to an item of lesser interest in this article. I put "problem" in quotes above, because if accurate, this article explains that global warming is at best a delay in a cooling cycle that will, in terms of the devastation we will have to survive, dwarf the problems that global warming will create. Viewed in this light, it might be worth dealing with those problems if we can push back that cooling cycle for another hundred years, give us another hundred years to produce better technology to help survive the ice to come after.