Basic physics supports solar activity as cause of global warming

The causes of Climate Change became a real debate today rather than just a slinging match between the vested interests in the 'green' and oil lobbies.

Piers Corbyn, a leading British weather expert, and brother of Jeremy Corbyn the left wing Labour MP, is no paid for oil lobbyist.

However, he has a excellent letter in today's Guardian which in a few short sentences throws a very large spanner in the works. His argument is simple and obvious; global warming is caused by the sun.

As the inventor of an extremely successful weather forecasting method based on his knowledge of the sun Piers Corybyn has the right to be taken seriously.

At the very least environmentalists and all those concerned with climate change should consider what he has to say.

At the moment the environmental movement is based on a huge error in thinking - the belief that global warming can be stoped simply by some environmental belt tightening, some green taxes, and planting more trees.

The truth is that global warming and it's effects will be far worse than we are being told. If we accept the truth, and start to prepare now for the inevitable, we can maybe save a lot of lives.

If you have not already, check out Global Dimming - then you will start to realise that the notion that humanity can stop Global Warming is simply self delusion.

The sooner we start to realise the truth the sooner we can start to prepare to survive what is going to happen - rather than waste our time in the futile attempt to stop the universe.

Just in case you can't be bothered to click to the Guardian this is the text of the Corybyn letter in full:

Basic physics supports solar activity as cause of global warming

Science, not argument about conspiracy, must be central to the debate about climate change (Letters, November 13), nevertheless Al Gore's stake in green business (Generation Investment Management) and David Miliband's closeness to the nuclear industry merit attention. Dr Wolff's claim that the climate-sceptical position "is in contradiction to everything we expect from basic physics" is bizarre, since physics is the basis of Weather Action's world-leading solar weather technique of long-range forecasting. The SWT relies on predictable effects of solar particles, not on CO2 or meteorology models - and I can assure your correspondent Richard Nunn that the SWT will be published when matters of intellectual property are sorted out.

Dr Wolff admits "CO2 has indeed increased in response to temperature change in the past ..." This is a general pattern in slow changes over the last 250,000 years (Caillon et al, Science, March 2003). Furthermore proxy measurements covering thousands of years (eg Neff et al, Nature 2001) show that, in timescales of 22 years, the magnetic sun-spot cycle and world temperatures move together, whereas CO2, while following temperature in slow general terms, also moves the other way for quite long periods. This contradicts the theory that CO2 drives temperature and climate.

Current CO2 levels, or rate of CO2 rise, are not unprecedented. CO2 levels have been three times current levels (Bob Carter, Marine Geophysical Lab, Queensland). CO2 rapid rise "spikes" doubtless happened before, given the power of nature compared with man's puny activity (not even 1% of total greenhouse effect), but ice-core data smoothes them out.

The global warmers' claim that current extra CO2 causes warming which gets dangerously magnified through the greenhouse effect of extra water vapour in the atmosphere, consequent to the temperature rise, also fails. The sea absorbs extra CO2. Furthermore, increased transpiration-cooling by enhanced growth of plants, which is caused by extra CO2, cancels out the extra greenhouse warming of that same CO2. Increased greenhouse heating due to doubling CO2 is 3.7 watts per sq metre. This is negated by about the same amount of enhanced transpiration-cooling of plants, all of which grow faster in extra CO2. Therefore there is no CO2 driven net heat flow and surface temperature rise. Temperature and climate change in our epoch is therefore driven by other factors, especially solar particle and magnetic effects.

So can action against climate change make a difference? Even if temperature trends can be changed - and controlling the sun is a tall order even for a Bush/ Blair legacy - there is no evidence of connected change in weather extremes or useful outcomes. Let's save the planet from real chemical pollutants, but CO2 is not one of them. Wouldn't it be better to work to predict climate than make vain attempts to change it?

Piers Corbyn

Weather Action (long-range forecasters)

• London Climate Change Demo pictures

• Update: The reactionary conservative climate change hysteria site 'Indymedia' is accusing 'schmoo' and Piers Corbyn of 'heresy' as in the Spanish Inquisition. This is actually a compliment as it comes from exactly the same type of people who always shout 'heresy' when someone says the Earth is not flat! Hopefully they will be extinct soon when humanity realises the truth - climate change is irreversible, it is not caused by humanity, and what we should be doing is planing for survival not falling for a huge con trick by the corporations who want a carbon economy. Long live Galileo. The left is dead - long live the left.

• Latest: George Monbiot, Al Gore: climate change criminals against humanity.



global warming - climate change - global dimming