Acclaimed Israeli Astrophysicist Says The Sun Drives Earth?s Climate, Not CO2

[AlleyCat]

Acclaimed Israeli Astrophysicist Says The Sun Drives Earth's Climate, Not CO2

Nir Shaviv is an Israeli astrophysicist and chairman of Jerusalem's Hebrew
University's physics department. He says that his research, and that of
colleagues, suggests that rising CO2 levels play only a minor role in Earth's
climate compared to the influence of the sun and cosmic radiation.

"Global warming clearly is a problem, though not in the catastrophic terms of
Al Gore's movies or environmental alarmists," said Shaviv. "Climate change has
existed forever and is unlikely to go away. But CO2 emissions don't play the
major role. Periodic solar activity does."

But I thought 97% of climate scientists agree that human activity is the main
driver of climate change?

"Only people who don't understand science take the 97% statistic seriously,"
answers Shaviv.

"Survey results depend on who you ask, who answers and how the questions are
worded. In any case, science is not a democracy. Even if 100% of scientists
believe something, one person with good evidence can still be right."

Maybe Shaviv's credentials can be dismissed...

Dr. Shaviv enrolled at Israel's Technion University -the country's equivalent
of MIT- at the age of 13 and earned an MA while serving in the Israel Defense
Force's celebrated 8200 Intelligence unit. He returned to Technion, where he
earned his doctorate, afterward completing post-doctoral work at California
Institute of Technology and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical
Astrophysics. He also has been an Einstein Fellow at The Institute for Advanced
Study in Princeton

So, no, his credentials can't be dismissed.

We're told to listen to the scientists, right? Well there are few more
qualified than Dr. Nir Shaviv.

But what about a political agenda? To have this view, surely Shaviv been
corrupted by the right, funded by Big Oil?

"In American terms, I would describe myself as liberal on most domestic issues,
somewhat hawkish on security," explained Shaviv. "Nonetheless, the Trump
administration's position on global climate change is correct insofar as it
rejects the orthodoxy of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC).

"Since [2003], literally billions have been spent on climate research ... Yet
the conventional wisdom hasn't changed. The proponents of man-made climate
change still ignore the effect of the Sun on the Earth's climate, which
overturns our understanding of twentieth-century climate change."

Shaviv extrapolates: "Solar activity varies over time. A major variation is
roughly eleven years or more, which clearly affects climate. This principle has
been generally known, but in 2008 I was able to quantify it by using sea level
data. When the Sun is more active, there is a rise in sea level here on Earth.
Higher temperature makes water expand. When the sun is less active, temperature
goes down and the sea level falls. The correlation is as clear as day.

"Based on the increase of solar activity during the twentieth century, it
should account for between half to two-thirds of all climate change," he
contends. "That, in turn, implies that climate sensitivity to CO2 should be
about 1.0 degree when the amount of CO2 doubles."

The link between solar activity and the heating and cooling of the Earth is
indirect, he continued...

Galactic Cosmic Rays are a mixture of high-energy photons and sub-atomic
particles accelerated toward Earth by supernova explosions and other violent
events in the cosmos. Solar Cosmic Rays are the same, though their source is
the Sun.

Both Galactic and Solar Cosmic rays hitting Earth's atmosphere create aerosols
which in turn seed clouds (Svensmark et al) - making them a crucial player in
earth's weather and climate. During solar minimum, the Sun's magnetic field
weakens and the outward pressure of the solar wind decreases. This allows more
cosmic rays from deep space to penetrate our planet's atmosphere and nucleate
more clouds. This phenomenon is of course exaggerated during a Grand solar
minimum-such as the one we're likely entering now (or about to come the onset
of Solar Cycle 26).

"Clouds are the Earth's sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason,
you have global warming - or global cooling." - Roy W. Spencer Ph.D.

"Today we can demonstrate and prove the sun's effect on climate based on a wide
range of evidence, from fossils that are hundreds of millions of years old to
buoy readings to satellite altimetry data from the past few decades," Shaviv
continued. "We also can reproduce and mimic atmospheric conditions in the
laboratory to confirm the evidence.

"All of it shows the same thing, the bulk of climate change is caused by the
sun via its impact on atmospheric charge, which means that most of the warming
comes from nature - a freshman physics student can see this.

"Our findings are very inconvenient for conventional wisdom. We know that there
have been very large variations of climate in the past that have little to do
with the burning of fossil fuels. A thousand years ago the earth was as warm as
it is today. During the Little Ice Age three hundred years ago the River Thames
froze more often. In the first and second IPCC reports these events were
mentioned. In 2001 they disappeared. Suddenly no mention of natural warming, no
Little Ice Age. The climate of the last millennium was presented as basically
fixed until the twentieth century. This is a kind of Orwellian cherry-picking
to fit a pre-determined narrative."

Shaviv says that he has accepted no financial support for his research from the
fossil fuel industry.

"The real problem is funding from funding agencies like the National Science
Foundation because these proposals have to undergo review by people in a
community that ostracizes us," he said, because of his "non-conventional"
viewpoint.

"Global warming is not a purely scientific issue any more. It has repercussions
for society. It has also taken on a moralistic, almost religious quality. If
you believe what everyone believes, you are a good person. If you don't, you
are a bad person. Who wants to be a sinner?"

In Shaviv's view, the worldwide crusade to limit and eventually ban fossil
fuels "comes with real world social and economic consequences." Switching to
more costly energy sources will drive industry from more industrialized
countries to poorer countries that can less afford wind turbines and solar
panels.

"It may be a financial sacrifice the rich are willing to make," Shaviv
concluded. "Even in developed countries the pressure to fore-go fossil fuel
puts poor people in danger of freezing during the winter for lack of affordable
home heating. The economic growth of third world countries will be inhibited if
they cannot borrow from the World Bank to develop cheap fossil-based power
plants. These are serious human problems in the here and now, not in a
theoretical future."


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Swings Between Extremes In South America
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