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Archived Rebuttal
This is the archived Basic rebuttal to the climate myth "It's the sun". Click here to view the latest rebuttal.
What the science says...
| In the last 35 years of global warming, sun and climate have been going in opposite directions |
Until about 1960, measurements by scientists showed that the brightness and warmth of the sun, as seen from the Earth, was increasing. Over the same period temperature measurements of the air and sea showed that the Earth was gradually warming. It was not surprising therefore for most scientists to put two and two together and assume that it was the warming sun that was increasing the temperature of our planet.
However, between the 1960s and the present day the same solar measurements have shown that the energy from the sun is now decreasing. At the same time temperature measurements of the air and sea have shown that the Earth has continued to become warmer and warmer. This proves that it cannot be the sun; something else must be causing the Earth's temperature to rise.
Figure 1: Global temperature (red, NASA GISS) and Total solar irradiance (blue, 1880 to 1978 from Solanki, 1979 to 2009 from PMOD).
So, while there is no credible science indicating that the sun is causing the observed increase in global temperature, it's the known physical properties of greenhouse gasses that provide us with the only real and measurable explanation of global warming.
Updated on 2010-11-20 by John Russell.
THE ESCALATOR
(free to republish)