# Global Warming progressing far faster than previously thought

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-progressing-far-faster-than-previously-thought/679056>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [January 17, 2014, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-progressing-far-faster-than-previously-thought/679056 "2014-01-17T13:47:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 493

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**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 18, 2014, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-progressing-far-faster-than-previously-thought/679056/493 "2014-02-18T18:49:18Z")

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> [@FXMastermind](#):
>
> Now when you read some nobody telling you the information on the solar issue, from a college course, from an actual University, is wrong and they are right, you know you entered the twilight zone.

… says the guy who has **never** AFAIK got anything right on the subject of climate science – **ever**! 😃 I’m still chuckling over “water vapor is not a feedback” but I’m more impressed by [this recent trifecta](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17114118&postcount=577) where you managed to get\* three things wrong in a single post\*. Actually, four things, if one counts the Mat Collins quotation from that exemplar of scientific authority, the Daily Mail, on which [Collins himself had to correct them the next day](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17113596&postcount=571).

Actually you got [five things completely wrong](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17110616&postcount=518) now that I think of it – and that’s just in the past couple of days. Still want to play this game? OK, then the solar thing makes six.

Because my statement about the [solar constant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_constant) being essentially constant over recent decades (and really over the entire post-industrial era) is not in dispute by any serious science, and your problem once again is an incompetent armchair reading of a discussion of possible long-term centennial and millennial changes which, even over those timescales, are dwarfed by the magnitude of anthropogenic forcings, and are in any case highly speculative (the author’s own statement that “The correlations are somewhat controversial” is rather an understatement).

The magnitude of solar variability in the context that is relevant and the context that I was clearly referring to [can be readily seen here](http://www.realclimate.org/images/ipcc_rad_forc_ar5.jpg) – **compared to GHG forcings, solar variability is almost invisible**.

The latest IPCC AR5 cut TSI variability estimates by more than half from the AR4, and clearly states:

> [@](#):
>
> 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 … there is a high confidence that 21st century solar forcing will be much smaller than the projected increased forcing due to GHGs.

From IPCC AR5 WG1, Technical Summary, TS.3.5; more details in _5.2.1.2 Solar Forcing_ and _8.4.1 Solar Irradiance_.

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