To Predict Global Climate Change Look to the Sun

A trip to the beach during the summer requires the use of proper suntan lotion to prevent a very bad sunburn. In fact, a hot summer day makes us often retreat from the sun into the cover of nearby shade. However, a cold winter day will often make us long for the warmth of the sun's direct rays.

When we plan each day, it is around the sun. The sun determines our scheduled activities in the daylight and during the dark of each night. The changing seasons are a function of the number of hours of sunlight. So, if the sun is such a factor in our lives each day, why do we not even consider the sun as a catalyst for future global climate change?

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been looking in the wrong place for the cause of global climate change. It's global climate change projections do not include the influence of the sun. As a result, it's computer-generated model, which predicts a one-degree Fahrenheit increase in global temperature in each decade of this century due to human-emitted carbon dioxide gas, is in need of drastic repair.

The truth is that it is becoming clearer with each passing day that global climate change is a function of the sun and not a function of an increase in man-made CO2 emissions. The fact is that global temperatures have not increased in the last ten years, since 1998, even with a significant global increase in CO2. Also, consider that the first half of this year (2008) was actually the coolest of the last five years, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

So, the current trend of global temperature is becoming colder, not warmer, despite the continued increase in CO2. Of course, the reality for the United Nations is that, in all probability, the extent of their error is about to soon get much worse. Since they are looking at the wrong catalyst of global climate change, they really have no idea what is about to happen next. To more adequately predict global temperature in the next few decades, the IPCC should be looking at the activity of the sun.

Indeed, studying the sun is exactly what astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon, a researcher at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been doing for years. Dr. Soon has identified a clear link between the sun’s activity as indicated by it's magnetic activity and temperature variations in the Arctic and Greenland over a period of time of about 130 years.

Dr. Soon chose this area for study since it has good temperature records and is an area sensitive to climate change, so that the signal from any one climatic influence should be easier to spot. He also says he can point to a physical mechanism in the circulation of the ocean linking the sun’s influence on temperature in the region.

Dr. Soon discussed the conclusions of his research work recently as follows: "Global temperature change can be attributed to slight variations in the sun's energy output, not man-made carbon dioxide emissions."

He continues, "When the sun is slightly brighter, meaning giving more light to Earth's system, the temperature warms in the Arctic. With the cooling that we observed in the Arctic from the 1940s to the 1970s, guess what the sun is doing? It's actually dimming slightly, ever so slightly. And then, guess what happened after the late 1970s? The sun brightens again."

Meanwhile, a new research paper from the Astronomical Society of Australia also identifies the sun as the catalyst for global climate change. The paper contends that the level of activity on the Sun will significantly diminish sometime in the next decade and remain low for about 20 to 30 years. On each occasion that the Sun has done this in the past the World’s mean temperature has dropped by 1 - 2 degrees C.

Of course, all this recent research just confirms earlier findings about the sun's role in global climate change. Consider that the sun's influence in the long term cooling and warming of the planet was discovered by the Danish Meteorological Institute in 1991. The Institute released a study using data that went back centuries which showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.

Then, several years later, a Hoover Institution Study examined the same historical data and came to a similar conclusion. "The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100," according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.

As world politicians and the United Nations continue a misguided global warming focus on man-made CO2 emissions, evidence of the sun 's role in global climate change continues to grow.

So, it should not be surprising that to predict global climate change in the decades ahead we should look to the sun, just like we do in preparation for each calendar day.