# Do global warming "skeptics" honestly see us as a benign species? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 5, 2014, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984 "2014-01-05T23:18:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 34
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2014, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/661 "2014-02-22T04:43:48Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > IMNSHO, if you are wrong about something scientific, it’s just science at work. If the evidence is overwhelming for something, and you stick to your error, it’s then a mistake. [checks the \*\*wolfpup \*\*link] Yep, you are mistaken, a lot. > [@FXMastermind](#): > > The UV portion of the sun’s output varies by a huge amount. This is new knowledge, gained recently. The effect this has on our atmosphere and surface and oceans is unknown. You are wrong, or rather your sources are. But this happens all the time. It’s the refusal to move forward, integrate new knowledge, and stick to your guns when you are wrong, that’s the real scientific mistake. No, you need a big fat cite for what you claim here, the last one that even a contrarian produced in the other thread reported that the sun was not contributing much to the current warming. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2014, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/662 "2014-02-22T05:40:59Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > IMNSHO, if you are wrong about something scientific, it’s just science at work. If the evidence is overwhelming for something, and you stick to your error, it’s then a mistake. > > The UV portion of the sun’s output varies by a huge amount. This is new knowledge, gained recently. The effect this has on our atmosphere and surface and oceans is unknown. You are wrong, or rather your sources are. But this happens all the time. It’s the refusal to move forward, integrate new knowledge, and stick to your guns when you are wrong, that’s the real scientific mistake. Standard operating procedure again, I see. Claim you’d be delighted to see any examples of when you were ever wrong, and when it’s pointed out that you’ve been not only wrong recently on about a dozen significant points of science, but _outrageously_ wrong on most of them, just ignore it and throw in another completely irrelevant digression and run away. And it IS irrelevant, too. It doesn’t change the minimal role of solar variations in post-industrial global average temperature as already discussed and cited at length. The changes in the UV component are just as cyclic as TSI overall, and while they change by up to a few percent in total (with bigger or smaller variations in specific spectra) over the solar cycle vs. ~0.1% for TSI, they only influence climate by incrementally warming the stratosphere directly and through indirect effects on atmospheric chemistry, like increased ozone production in the stratosphere – all of which is a drop in the bucket compared to the massive SSI warming the surface. Besides the fact that this has no discernible influence on global surface mean temp across solar cycles, the effect that it **does** have is mainly of interest with respect to regional effects and changes in some cyclic ocean circulation systems (like the NAO). Sure there are unknowns, but the denialist tactic of throwing in a FUD-bomb and then running away obfuscates the fact that the scope of influence of the unknowns is well bounded. Indeed the interest in UV cyclical variations is more to better understand and model regional climatic effects like deep tropical convection than anything to do with global surface temperature trends. So much for your latest round of diversionary BS. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2014, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/663 "2014-02-22T09:05:52Z")
Reality always trumps rhetoric > **[acp-13-3945-2013.pdf](https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/13/3945/2013/acp-13-3945-2013.pdf)** > > 1773.89 KB ---
**Author:** ![nachtmusick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ac91a4/32.png) [@nachtmusick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nachtmusick)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2014, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/664 "2014-02-22T12:09:00Z")
So this is the abstract of what you just linked to: _Abstract. The lack of long and reliable time series of solar spectral irradiance (SSI) measurements makes an accurate quantification of solar contributions to recent climate change difficult. Whereas earlier SSI observations and models provided a qualitatively consistent picture of the SSI variability, recent measurements by the SORCE (SOlar Radiation and Climate Experiment) satellite suggest a significantly stronger variability in the ultraviolet (UV) spectral range and changes in the visible and near-infrared (NIR) bands in anti-phase with the solar cycle. A number of recent chemistry-climate model (CCM) simulations have shown that this might have significant implications on the Earth’s atmosphere. Motivated by these results, we summarize here our current knowledge of SSI variability and its impact on Earth’s climate. We present a detailed overview of existing SSI measurements and provide thorough comparison of models available to date. SSI changes influence the Earth’s atmosphere, both directly, through changes in shortwave (SW) heating and therefore, temperature and ozone distributions in the stratosphere, and indirectly, through dynamical feedbacks. We investigate these direct and indirect effects using several stateof- the art CCM simulations forced with measured and modelled SSI changes. A unique asset of this study is the use of a common comprehensive approach for an issue that is usually addressed separately by different communities. We show that the SORCE measurements are difficult to reconcile with earlier observations and with SSI models. Of the five SSI models discussed here, specifically NRLSSI (Naval Research Laboratory Solar Spectral Irradiance), SATIRE-S (Spectral And Total Irradiance REconstructions for the Satellite era), COSI (COde for Solar Irradiance), SRPM (Solar Radiation Physical Modelling), and OAR (Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma), only one shows a behaviour of the UV and visible irradiance qualitatively resembling that of the recent SORCE measurements. However, the integral of the SSI computed with this model over the entire spectral range does not reproduce the measured cyclical changes of the total solar irradiance, which is an essential requisite for realistic evaluations of solar effects on the Earth’s climate in CCMs. Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 3946 I. Ermolli et al.: Spectral irradiance and climate We show that within the range provided by the recent SSI observations and semi-empirical models discussed here, the NRLSSI model and SORCE observations represent the lower and upper limits in the magnitude of the SSI solar cycle variation. The results of the CCM simulations, forced with the SSI solar cycle variations estimated from the NRLSSI model and from SORCE measurements, show that the direct solar response in the stratosphere is larger for the SORCE than for the NRLSSI data. Correspondingly, larger UV forcing also leads to a larger surface response. Finally, we discuss the reliability of the available data and we propose additional coordinated work, first to build composite SSI data sets out of scattered observations and to refine current SSI models, and second, to run coordinated CCM experiments_ Once I was blind, but now the truth has been revealed to me. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2014, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/665 "2014-02-22T12:17:54Z")
> **[acp-13-3945-2013.pdf](https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/13/3945/2013/acp-13-3945-2013.pdf)** > > 1773.89 KB should be the complete paper ---
**Author:** ![nachtmusick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ac91a4/32.png) [@nachtmusick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nachtmusick)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2014, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/666 "2014-02-22T14:31:58Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2014, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/667 "2014-02-22T18:50:55Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > Reality always trumps rhetoric Yes, it does. Thanks for posting a paper\* that confirms exactly what I just said\*. 😃 All the more remarkable because I had not seen that particular one, although I’ve read earlier papers by both Ermoli and Krivova (separately) on the same topic. _ **Now** _ do you want to say something about the 12 major scientific facts (approximate count so far) that you got completely wrong and that you claimed I never mentioned? ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2014, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/668 "2014-02-22T20:50:19Z")
**There is, however, a dawning realization among researchers that even these apparently tiny variations can have a significant effect on terrestrial climate**. A new report issued by the National Research Council (NRC), “The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth’s Climate,” lays out some of the surprisingly complex ways that solar activity can make itself felt on our planet. The increase of incident solar UV during solar maximum conditions leads to increased generation of stratospheric ozone in the mid-to-upper stratosphere, which ultimately results in greater ozone in the tropical lower stratosphere. **This helps warm that region via both short- and long-wave absorption**. [Recent variability of the solar spectral irradiance and its impact on climate modelling](http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/13/3945/2013/acp-13-3945-2013.pdf) Go read the paper before you say anything else. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2014, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/669 "2014-02-22T21:07:22Z")
[See here for a proper response](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17130811&postcount=1971) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2014, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/670 "2014-02-22T21:52:32Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > [See here for a proper response](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17130811&postcount=1971) “My post is my cite”. Pathetic. AFAIK, your cite does not really help you because as NASA reported before regarding UV, "It would also imply that the sun’s contribution to climate change over the last century or so might be even smaller than currently thought, suggesting that the human contribution to climate change may in turn be even larger than current estimates. However, if UV measurements correspond with a period of unusually long and quiescent solar minimum that extended over 2007 to 2009. It may not be representative of past or future solar cycles." [http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/solarcycle-sorce.html](http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/solarcycle-sorce.html) You make the point that warming should also increase thanks to this, of course since most if that warming is currently going to the oceans this once again does not help your ideas much. It actually means that it is likely that more warming than expected is coming after this “pause” or cycle ends. Now, how much more UV is contributing to the current warming? When I look at the paper, the conclusions in essence are that the solar effect could be weaker, there is not much confidence on the readings that support the larger UV forcing, that would lead to a larger surface response in theory. But, the surface effect is regional and has little influence on globally averaged temperatures as they report. ---
**Author:** ![Farin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e79b87/32.png) [@Farin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farin)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2014, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/671 "2014-02-22T22:00:46Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > **There is, however, a dawning realization among researchers that even these apparently tiny variations can have a significant effect on terrestrial climate**. A new report issued by the National Research Council (NRC), “The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth’s Climate,” lays out some of the surprisingly complex ways that solar activity can make itself felt on our planet. > > The increase of incident solar UV during solar maximum conditions leads to increased generation of stratospheric ozone in the mid-to-upper stratosphere, which ultimately results in greater ozone in the tropical lower stratosphere. **This helps warm that region via both short- and long-wave absorption**. > > [Recent variability of the solar spectral irradiance and its impact on climate modelling](http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/13/3945/2013/acp-13-3945-2013.pdf) > > Go read the paper before you say anything else. Current estimations, according to this paper, are 8% of the change in climate may be solar related according to the IPCC, which focused on the ultraviolet (the bandwidth we have the most data for) irradiance. > [@](#): > > The possible related corrections are, however, expected to lie within 2–3 % Note that for the SCIAMACHY-based model, the original values listed by Pagaran et al. (2009) are shown. As discussed by Krivova and Solanki (2013), these values should most likely be corrected by a factor of roughly 1.2 So, it might now be 11 % of the contributing factor. Maybe 15% depending on the data correction that Solanki and Krivova arrive at. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > “My post is my cite”. > Pathetic. AFAIK, your cite does not really help you because as NASA reported before regarding UV, "It would also imply that the sun’s contribution to climate change over the last century or so might be even smaller than currently thought, suggesting that the human contribution to climate change may in turn be even larger than current estimates. > > However, if UV measurements correspond with a period of unusually long and quiescent solar minimum that extended over 2007 to 2009. It may not be representative of past or future solar cycles." > > [http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/solarcycle-sorce.html](http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/solarcycle-sorce.html) > > You make the point that warming should also increase thanks to this, of course since most if that warming is currently going to the oceans this once again does not help your ideas much. It actually means that it is likely that more warming than expected is coming after this “pause” or cycle ends. Now, how much more UV is contributing to the current warming? > > When I look at the paper, the conclusions in essence are that the solar effect could be weaker, there is not much confidence on the readings that support the larger UV forcing, that would lead to a larger surface response in theory. But, the surface effect is regional and has little influence on globally averaged temperatures as they report. Did you read the whole document? You can’t respond to FX until you read the whole document. (Not, I didn’t either. 😃 ) ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2014, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/672 "2014-02-22T22:02:46Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > **There is, however, a dawning realization among researchers that even these apparently tiny variations can have a significant effect on terrestrial climate**. A new report issued by the National Research Council (NRC), “The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth’s Climate,” lays out some of the surprisingly complex ways that solar activity can make itself felt on our planet. > > The increase of incident solar UV during solar maximum conditions leads to increased generation of stratospheric ozone in the mid-to-upper stratosphere, which ultimately results in greater ozone in the tropical lower stratosphere. **This helps warm that region via both short- and long-wave absorption**. > > [Recent variability of the solar spectral irradiance and its impact on climate modelling](http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/13/3945/2013/acp-13-3945-2013.pdf) > > Go read the paper before you say anything else. Oh, man, you are just too funny! 😃 First of all you linked to the wrong paper – you linked to the same damn one you linked before, the one you linked to disprove what I said about UV and that _confirmed exactly what I said_, a fact which I thought was wonderfully amusing. 😛 But I know the one you’re talking about from the National Academy of Sciences NRC, and I’ve read it. It says nothing different than I’ve already said. Once again you post words without comprehension – and for added humor, the “dawning realization” quote is from a press release and doesn’t even appear in the paper, and you didn’t understand what it means anyway. It means, as I already said, that solar variations, like those from UV, can have regional effects that are sufficiently significant that climate models can improve their accuracy by taking them into account, especially with respect to geographic resolution. Which is why the Ermolli et al. paper that you also didn’t read and thought was such a terrific rebuttal actually references the impact on climate modelling in its title. It does NOT mean “OMG, it’s the sun!” 😃 From the intro and preface to the NRC paper that you didn’t read: > [@](#): > > … the TSI changes over an 11-year cycle in step with the cycle of sunspots with an amplitude of nearly 0.1 percent, and this variation’s small effects (perhaps an amplitude of a few hundredths of a degree centigrade) on temperatures can be detected … Although the ultraviolet region of the spectrum provides only a small fraction of the TSI, ultraviolet irradiance can change by several percent over the solar cycle… > > … According to two presenters on paleoclimate, there is a need to study the idiosyncrasies of each key proxy record. Yet they also emphasized that there may be an emerging pattern of paleoclimate change coincident with periods of solar activity and inactivity, but only on long timescales of multiple decades to millennia. _All of which I’ve said_ in one form or another, either in this thread or in [this one](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=716196). If you’re not now going to address the major points of error that I listed previously, then I assume you don’t intend to and the claim that you never made errors and I never called you out on them can be put down to empty bluster. \*\*\*\* I would appreciate it if you didn’t post links here to the Pit where your insults are currently raging.\*\*\*\* I have no intention of getting involved there right now and am trying to have a factual discussion. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2014, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/673 "2014-02-22T22:24:14Z")
> [@Farin](#): > > Did you read the whole document? You can’t respond to FX until you read the whole document. (Not, I didn’t either. 😃 ) I actually did, on the whole it is notorious to me that one could report that the paper is mostly punting this as they report that more data is needed to be sure about how regular the UV item is. But as you noticed, even if the problematic data is confirmed the high estimates are not as important as assumed and the effect seems to be less at the global level. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2014, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/674 "2014-02-22T22:41:34Z")
> [@Farin](#): > > Current estimations, according to this paper, are 8% of the change in climate may be solar related according to the IPCC, which focused on the ultraviolet (the bandwidth we have the most data for) irradiance. No. First of all the paper references the AR4; in the current AR5, estimates of overall post-industrial solar forcing have been cut in half: > [@](#): > > The best estimate of RF from TSI changes over the industrial era is 0.05 [0.00 to 0.10] W m–2 (medium confidence), which includes greater RF up to around 1980 and then a small downward trend. This RF estimate is substantially smaller than the AR4 estimate due to the addition of the latest solar cycle and inconsistencies in how solar RF was estimated in earlier IPCC assessments. Secondly, the majority of the RF is from visible and IR, not UV. ---
**Author:** ![Farin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e79b87/32.png) [@Farin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farin)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2014, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/675 "2014-02-23T00:02:25Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > No. First of all the paper references the AR4; in the current AR5, estimates of overall post-industrial solar forcing have been cut in half: Yes, but I was going off of the paper as presented, which referenced the older AR. > [@wolfpup](#): > > Secondly, the majority of the RF is from visible and IR, not UV. I phrased it wrong. The IR is from the IPCC and the paper focuses on the UV. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2014, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/676 "2014-02-23T09:18:20Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > The UV portion of the sun’s output varies by a huge amount. This is new knowledge, gained recently. The effect this has on our atmosphere and surface and oceans is unknown. You are wrong, or rather your sources are. But this happens all the time. It’s the refusal to move forward, integrate new knowledge, and stick to your guns when you are wrong, that’s the real scientific mistake. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > No, you need a big fat cite for what you claim here Horseshit, it’s in the links I have provided multiple times. it’s the essence of both the NASA page as well as the new study the press release is about. The understanding that the sun spot cycle is associated with huge changes in the UV A and UV B energies, and how they alter our planet, that is exactly what they are about. I can’t read the paper for you, but if you act like you don’t understand at this point, it’s willful ignorance. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2014, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/677 "2014-02-23T14:59:09Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > Horseshit, it’s in the links I have provided multiple times. it’s the essence of both the NASA page as well as the new study the press release is about. We already saw that the study does not support you, in reality it points at the need to investigate if the UV found so far is very important or mildly so. As NASA reported it could mean that even more warming than expected will come as the human factor is still there in the background. So yes, we still need a fat cite, what you offered was pathetic and skinny. > [@FXMastermind](#): > > The understanding that the sun spot cycle is associated with huge changes in the UV A and UV B energies, and how they alter our planet, that is exactly what they are about. > > I can’t read the paper for you, but if you act like you don’t understand at this point, it’s willful ignorance. So says the guy that confuses sun spot charts with the ones of total sun irradiance, and is telling us that CO2 does not really warm the earth while at the same time he pumps up the UV line that the authors point out that is also a part of what should be included into the warming caused by human influences when it manages to get to the surface of the earth. As pointed by **wolfpup** , you are also ignoring the march of time, new research also means that the numbers are not up to date in the paper you quoted last. And then it remains to be seen how important it is, because regarding UV not much solar radiation makes it to the surface of the earth, so the CO2 absorption in the UV area is not really as important, almost all is absorbed by O3 and O2 in the stratosphere. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2014, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/678 "2014-02-23T22:51:13Z")
I think it might be worth noting at this point that the thread has been derailed since [way back here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17120812&postcount=651), so as a sort of public service let me navigate the path of derailment and maybe bring it back on track. FX made the pronouncement that climate models are basically useless, and provided a series of reasons that I debunked in the above post. (And then started [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=716196) based on a fundamentally wrong premise made all the more delightful by the fact that it references a paper _whose main conclusions are based on climate models_, and which cites another paper also deriving its conclusions from models.) But FX chose to ignore the climate model rebuttal, and focus on denying that he has a consistent pattern of getting major scientific facts wrong. When I linked to a list of examples, suddenly, out of the blue, that tack was abandoned as well, and we got a completely new digression about solar UV variations. [I provided here a bit of scientific background on solar UV](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17129671&postcount=662), at which point FX throws in a paper which, as pointed out, confirms exactly what I had just finished saying. Undeterred, FX throws in another one, which he didn’t link (he accidentally linked to the first one again). But it’s from an NRC workshop report that I’ve read and I quoted salient parts from it above, and again, it’s consistent with everything I’ve been saying. So the digression about solar variations ultimately adds nothing to the discussion about AGW and can be concluded thus: TSI varies around 0.1% between solar maxima and minima but is overall remarkably constant across solar cycles and within geologically short timeframes, specifically the post-industrial era in which climate is being discussed and closely scrutinized. It varies more over much longer periods, but that is completely irrelevant to this discussion. Additionally, UV varies by larger amounts in a spectrally-dependent fashion, and these effects are interesting from the standpoint of stratospheric heating and photochemical effects, which could affect regional weather and have implications that should be considered in climate models – _but they all fall within the tightly bounded energy constraints of total incoming solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere, the TSI_. The fallacy here is in disingenuously focusing on words like “changes” and “climate effects” without understanding their contextual meaning, to try to imply changes that have statistically significant persistent impacts on global mean surface temperature, which is manifestly not what either of those papers is saying and is obvious to anyone who has read and understood them. Anyone who doubts that has only to look at the [Changes in Solar Irradiance](http://www.realclimate.org/images/ipcc_rad_forc_ar5.jpg) part of the latest IPCC AR5 forcings summary, which incorporates most of the relevant recent research. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2014, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/679 "2014-02-24T02:08:06Z")
I got to tell you, I didn’t read any of that. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2014, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/680 "2014-02-24T02:09:11Z")
What you wrote I mean. Try breaking it down instead of the dreaded wall of text, maybe some highlights, some key points, a goal, a tldr summary. Otherwise, TEGO [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984.md?page=33) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984.md?page=35)