Scientists blame sun for global warming–BBC 1998
By Paul Homewood
Before the “Science Was Settled!”
In 1998, the BBC still reported climate issues with impartiality:
Climate changes such as global warming may be due to changes in the sun rather than to the release of greenhouse gases on Earth.
Climatologists and astronomers speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Philadelphia say the present warming may be unusual – but a mini ice age could soon follow.
The sun provides all the energy that drives our climate, but it is not the constant star it might seem.
Careful studies over the last 20 years show that its overall brightness and energy output increases slightly as sunspot activity rises to the peak of its 11-year cycle.
And individual cycles can be more or less active.
The sun is currently at its most active for 300 years.
That, say scientists in Philadelphia, could be a more significant cause of global warming than the emissions of greenhouse gases that are most often blamed.
The researchers point out that much of the half-a-degree rise in global temperature over the last 120 years occurred before 1940 – earlier than the biggest rise in greenhouse gas emissions.
![[ image: Ancient trees reveal most warm spells are caused by the sun]](https://i0.wp.com/news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/55000/images/_56456_tree.jpg)
Ancient trees reveal most warm spells are caused by the sun
Using ancient tree rings, they show that 17 out of 19 warm spells in the last 10,000 years coincided with peaks in solar activity.
They have also studied other sun-like stars and found that they spend significant periods without sunspots at all, so perhaps cool spells should be feared more than global warming.
The scientists do not pretend they can explain everything, nor do they say that attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should be abandoned. But they do feel that understanding of our nearest star must be increased if the climate is to be understood.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Our scant understanding of the atmosphere is much better developed than our knowledge of solar physics. But it doesn’t take much imagination to think variability in solar inputs to the climate system are the likely drivers of “climate change.” CO2 is a very small part of the total greenhouse gas spectrum. There is a convenient correlation between rising concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and rising temperatures and there is a plausible, experimental, theory that CO2 is an important greenhouse gas. There is also an eight-hundred pound gorilla sitting in the room called the sun. The sun drives the oceans, which in turn, drive weather and climate. This was obvious to almost everyone in 1998. It is obvious to me – the 800 pound gorilla is sitting on the atmospheric CO2/AGW correlation and it can’t breathe.
I don’t think that there actually is much of a correlation between CO2 levels in the atmosphere and temperature. Temps were going up before both man made CO2 emissions and the actual concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere started rising. CO2 concentration is still going up at present but temps stopped rising twenty years ago and may have started to go down.
Unfortunately there was an 800 pound Gore(illa) who saw an opportunity to game the system and make shedloads of money, while at the same time sticking it to the Republican party for stealing the Presidency. The man is a moral-free zone.
So, it is “Our Mister Sun.” Who knew?
Do you suppose they will figure out that lower temperatures (yes, lower) in the past 18 or so years are due to less frequent sunspot occurrences?
Milankovitch knew years ago! https://www.theguardian.com/science/2001/jun/28/physicalsciences.highereducation
The Sun is into Solar Minimum. The rate of it’s descent into the Solar Minimum is the fastest decline in ten thousand years.
If the Sun is to blame for anything then it is resolved and we can all stop thinking about it.
Also they can now call off the constant spraying of the atmosphere.
Haha…Where did you dig that up Paul?
I have a script from an Horizon episode from 2001-02 that I downloaded I think (will check) called “Frozen Earth-The coming Ice Age”…buggered if I can find any reference at all for this episode anywhere…
The term used for the Horizon episode was ‘Snowball Earth’. It was aired on 22 February 2001 and a transcript is available on line – search for ‘snowball earth Horizon programme’.
‘Snowball Earth.’
This would have referred to the theory that the Earth was almost completely iced over for long periods of time in the far distant past, the last time being more than six hundred million years ago.
Reblogged this on WeatherAction News and commented:
Climatologists and astronomers speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Philadelphia say the present warming may be unusual – but a mini ice age could soon follow.
The sun provides all the energy that drives our climate, but it is not the constant star it might seem.
Careful studies over the last 20 years show that its overall brightness and energy output increases slightly as sunspot activity rises to the peak of its 11-year cycle.
And individual cycles can be more or less active.
The sun is currently at its most active for 300 years.
That, say scientists in Philadelphia, could be a more significant cause of global warming than the emissions of greenhouse gases that are most often blamed.
The researchers point out that much of the half-a-degree rise in global temperature over the last 120 years occurred before 1940 – earlier than the biggest rise in greenhouse gas emissions.
And then came the Adjustoscene
https://www.thetvdb.com/series/horizon/seasons/all has not got your epsiode listed the average number made each year is 17+ and for some reason that year is 11, this of course allows for redaction since the BBC is the original archive and record keeper (https://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/archives.shtml) Iceball Earth is the one listed and was covered in a new scientist article in 2006 and mainstreamed in 2010 which is odd since Horzons goes for original work. Myself I might blame a bit of BBC digital book burning to create the Mandela effect, if you send out the author and publication date we may dig up the paper archive history.
That was before the BBC decided to put all its funding of their pension fund into renewable energy.
Have no fear. Whoever was responsible for that article on the BBC in !998 will have been purged years ago – or sent for retraining.
O’Brien has him/her on a rack in the Ministry of Love – just see it now, ‘how many fingers and I holding up?’
Slow, small but significant changes in the diameter of the sun were much discussed and analysed around 30 years ago, but a quick search shows this now to be a very unpopular activity. There are claims about inconsistencies in the data, but that never stopped sweeping and incontrovertible conclusions from highly inconsistent tree ring data.
I wonder how hard it is to get funding for investigation of such a politically incorrect subject.
The sun is currently at its most active for 300 years.
Whoever wrote that wouldn’t be popular at the BBC climate HQ today.
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
There is this side link on Fiji going under the waves due to AGW.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/37816.stm
Proved false.
Click to access OFOAJ.MS.ID.555666.pdf
“…………..there is a total lack of signs indicating a present rise in sea level; on the contrary,
our results are indicative of quite stable sea level conditions. Consequently, our records may be taken as reassurance for lowlaying coasts and islands that potential for flooding in the near future is unlikely.”
Also an interesting comment on coral death.
“In the last 60 years coral reefs died due to a sea level lowering of about 10-20cm or due to severe coral bleaching at the 1998 ENSO event. After that, very stable sea level conditions must have prevailed forcing corals at several sites to grow laterally into microatolls.”
Motion of the earth is well known, variation of the tilt relative to seasons less so.