----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Brown"
Newsgroups: sci.agriculture,sci.geo.meteorology
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2004 4:07 AM
Subject: Climate models [Was: Real beef! [Was: Agriculture's
Bullied Market]]


snip
:
: The latter possibility can be ruled out by data from satellite
: monitoring of total solar irradiance or TSI. There are several
: instruments in flight that have been doing this continuously for a
: couple of decades.
:
: The area under the curve of the sun spot numbers is believed to
be a pretty
: good relative indictor of the amount of energy the sun puts out.
The last
: cycle being pretty weak and the one before being a very strong
one. We are
: at the lowest point of a new cycle that is about 6 weeks old
right now.
:
: It only makes a very small modulation on the total amount of
energy
: output of about 0.08% over the period for which accurate satellite
data
: exists. Enough cyclical variation to show up in some proxy data
like
: tree rings, sediments, and ice cores though.

Satellite data only covers a very small part of the data. The weater
connected with the Maunder Minimum and the Grand Maximum
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/...s/00416654.pdf is a
better indicater than three or four cycles worth of data confused by
short term trends and co2 and methane emmsions. The historic record
of sun spots and the weather show a much bigger swing than we have
seen in the last 200 years.

I don't dissagree that we sould conserve fuel and reduce CO2 and
other greenhouse gases but I don't believe that they are the
driveing force behind climate change and CO2 is being tied up by
modern no til farming far faster that models are accoununting for.
If you reall need to get rid of CO2 fertilize the ocean with iron.

We should not wreck the world economy over some computer modles that
the folks that write them won't stand behind.

Gordon
: