Dope Slap for the Global Warming ‘Skeptics’

One of the claims the opponents of Energy Policy Change trot out to deny the reality of global warming is that the warming trend is caused by the natural cycle of solar activity. Nothing to do with our runaway fuel consumption and other human behaviors, so nothing we can do about it, so why change our habits?

That claim just got shot down.

Scientists have delivered the final blow to the theory that recent global warming can be explained by variations in the natural cycles of the Sun – a favourite refuge for climate sceptics who dismiss the influence of greenhouse-gas emissions.
 

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The study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A, shows there is no doubt that solar activity over the past 20 years has run in the opposite direction to global warming, and therefore cannot explain rises in average global temperatures.

This report also reveals the blatant dishonesty of one attempt to convince the public we can’t, therefore shouldn’t do anything about global warming:

In the recent [British] Channel 4 programme The Great Global Warming Swindle, the rise in solar activity over the latter half of the 20th century was erroneously presented as perfectly matching the rise in global average temperatures.
 

Dr Lockwood said he was outraged when he saw the documentary, because of the way the programme-makers used graphs of temperature rises and sunspot cycles that were cut off in the 1980s, when the two trends went in the opposite direction.

A quick check of Google News shows a list of items from British and Commonwealth news media, but nothing from the U.S. Hmmm. Well, maybe tomorrow. Or maybe the U.S. news media will be too busy telling us all about Posh Spice’s imminent arrival in L.A.