AGW Indeed! More Like Heliogenic Climate Control

AGW zealots must be having a great deal of heartburn this winter. Not only has there been record snowfall amounts throughout the Midwest, but now come new reports that futher expose the folly that is AGW.

First comes a report from the Canadian Broadcast Company that the ice cap in the Arctic is expanding back to near normal levels, and that in some places the ice is actually getting thicker. Why? Because of the extended severe cold weather in the Arctic this year.

Also, recent observation of a virtual absence of sunspots for neary two years is making solar researchers uneasy. They feel this indicates some change in the internal workings of the sun. The last two times something like this was seen was in the 1650's and again in the late 1790's-1820's. Both instances presaged decreases in solar irradiation that caused global temperatures to drop; the second one caused what it now called the Little Ice Age. (And a local touch -- an astrophysicist gave a lecture at the University of Texas-Tyler -- yes, right here in Texas! -- saying pretty much the same thing, that the solar variability is the major driver of Earth's climate.)

During both of these periods of global cooling, much more human misery was caused than any AGW prophet of doom has so far predicted. Some of these solar researchers are concerned we are now heading for another such period (possibly as long as a century) of global cooling beginning before or at least by 2020.

I bring to your attention the following quote from the Investor Business Daily article quoted in the blog post I cited above:

As we have noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on the Earth's climate over time has been the sun.

For instance, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany report the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years, accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over the last 100 years.

R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales."

I thank Thomas Lifson for putting me on to the first of these reports, and Marc Sheppard for the second. Both posts were at a site called American Thinker that I just discovered and to which I will definitely be returning.

I also cannot say this any better than Mr. Sheppard did in his post, so I won't try:

The unremitting mulish refusal to accept the yellow dwarf star at the center of our solar system as the force that drives our climate and weather - despite all overwhelming correlating evidence -- is simply mind-boggling.