Part 1: The History of Wrong Conclusions

by Anthony Bright-Paul

The History of Science is the history of wrong conclusions, being eventually overturned by more evidence, or more correctly by logic. Even today, the data that science uncovers is more often than not misunderstood.

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We have only got to go back to Copernicus and Galileo, or more recently to Milankovich, to see how the scientific establishment in each era resists the correct conclusions, and this same resistance is apparent today. I hate to say that Religion nearly always opposes Science and scientific truths, so I will amend that and say, without fear of contradiction, that False Religion almost always opposes Philosophy, that is the search for truth. That False Religion opposes Truth is no more apparent in the past than it is today. In fact what we are truly concerned with is Philosophy and not Science. Science is the study and establishment of Facts; Philosophy is that which enables man to come to correct conclusions. Today, with a welter of scientific facts, a truly terrifying mountain of wrong conclusions surrounds us. I will attempt here to show that every layman has every right to examine the data and form his or her own conclusions. There are those who say, ‘We must leave it to the experts’. Or who say, ‘I don’t know enough about the subject’. But need we be supine? We have been endowed with Reason, and should use it! So in the foregoing I will attempt to stimulate every reader, not to come to my conclusions, but to come to their own, and I will do this simply by a series of questions. I may put in the answers, where they are incontrovertible, or I may do that later. I want to ask you a whole series of questions about Climate and Climate Change, since there seems to be so much confusion and misunderstanding about this subject. Does man control the Sun? Does man control the sunspots on the Sun? Does man control the solar winds? Does man control the solar irradiation that reaches the Earth?

Those are my first questions. Have any of you answered ‘Yes’?

• Does man control the winds?
• Does man control the speed of the winds?
• Can man control the Jetstream?
• Can man control the barometric pressures?

 Anyone here for ‘Yes’?

• Does man produce clouds?
• Can man produce rain?
• Does man control snowfall?
• Does man control hailstones?
• Can man control monsoons?
• Can man produce aridity?
  

I don’t know about you, but the Met Office doesn’t seem to be able to control anything!

• Does man control Outer Space?
• Does man control the Stratosphere?
• Can man control the Troposphere?
• Can man control the rate of heat loss in the atmosphere?
• Can man alter the Adiabatic Lapse Rate?
  

There are some who might answer ‘Yes’ here. Come to your own conclusion.

• Can man control the seas and the oceans?
• Con men control the height of the waves?
• Can man control the Tides?
• Can man control the salinity of the oceans?
• Can man control the depths of the waters?
  
• Does man control the Gulf Stream, La Niña and El Niño?
• Or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation?

 Anyone go along with King Canute?

• Does man or can man control Volcanoes?
• Does man control Volcanic eruptions?
• Does man produce Hot Water Vents and Geysers?
• Does man control ocean floors and subsidence?
• Does man control the movement of the tectonic plates?
  

Anyone for God?

• Can Man control the elliptical path of the Earth round the Sun?
• Can man control the angle of the Earth to the Sun?
• Can man control the distance of the Earth to the Sun?
• Can man control the Milankovich wobble?
• Can Man control the Earth’s rotation?
  
• Can Man produce lightning, electrical storms and tornadoes?
• Can Man produce hurricanes and typhoons at will?
  

I think that to all the above questions the answer has to be a resounding, ‘No’. Man cannot and does not control Climate in any way, shape or form. However, some may maintain that Man does influence Climate in various ways, so we will try to examine that in this same way by asking a series of questions. I may have to put these questions into some sort of context to make them sensible. And the answers may be Yes or No, depending.

These questions concern the properties of gases. The question here is whether gases are active or passive?

• Can Carbon Dioxide be frozen?
• Can Carbon Dioxide be liquefied?
• Can Carbon Dioxide be cooled?
• Can Carbon Dioxide be warmed?
  

In this case I will suggest that the answer in every case must be, Yes. Carbon Dioxide can be made into Dry Ice, which is even colder than Water Ice, and can even cause frostbite. Carbon Dioxide can be liquefied and is often so done for ease of transportation. Carbon Dioxide can be cooled, as in Ice-Cold lager from a fridge. Carbon Dioxide can be warmed as in warm beer. So the question is this: Is Carbon Dioxide active or passive? Please note above the use of the passive tense.

Let us do the same with Water Vapour?

• Can Water Vapour be cooled or even frozen?
• Can Water Vapour be warmed?
• Can Water Vapour retain heat for some while?
• Will Water Vapour cool by itself?
  

Again here, the answers must be Yes in every case. Freezing fog is Water Vapour and maintains cold. Humidity is Water Vapour and retains heat. It does not produce cold, nor does it produce heat. So the answer is that Gases are passive.

• Can gases be compressed?
• Will gases expand to fill a container?
• Can gases be inhaled and exhaled?

I hope so – in all cases it is clear that gases are passive. They re-act. In no way can a Gas jump out of a Gasholder or a can, like a Genie, and say ‘Tickety-Boo!’ ( I am willing to be corrected!)

The next questions are about the Environment.

• Does man affect his environment?
  

The answer to this must be simply, Yes. Man is born without clothes. So man immediately affects his environment by weaving cloth and by using animal skins. So man affects his immediate environment. Man also affects his environment by cutting down trees and clearing ground and growing crops. He also plants trees. Man bakes bricks, makes cement and builds houses, factories and temples. Man diverts rivers and builds dams and canals. Man builds sewage systems. Man uses pesticides to clear away mosquitoes and other pests. In other words in a million and one ways Man adapts to what is most often a hostile environment. Man burns wood, coal and oil to produce heat. Man can heat water for a variety of processes including cooking of food, and central heating in buildings.

Man also creates laws in order to protect the environment, to protect rivers and seashores from a variety of pollutants.

In fact, in order to live and to be mobile, Man, from the beginning of time has had to adapt to his environment. He has smelted iron, formed bronze from copper, has used lead in a variety of ways, including roofing. He has built roads, and dykes. He has made leather from animal skins. He has milked cows and goats and made a variety of dairy products. He has made medicines and hospitals for the sick. He has also made explosives.

So here it is abundantly clear that man has affected the Environment. That is abundantly true and is clearly within Man’s remit.

Some people will argue from this that since Man affects his environment, that he therefore in some ways alters the Climate. Is such a conclusion valid?  I am afraid it looks tempting so to conclude, but it is a non sequitur.

Prove it to yourself.

Man does not drive climate, but he adapts to the drivers of climate.

The Mid-West of the USA is an alley for Tornadoes. Some tornadoes are over a  mile wide and maybe 50 miles long. . It is interesting to look up in Google the cause of tornadoes, so the question is:

•  Does man create Tornadoes?
• Are Hurricanes man-made?
• Are Thunderstorms and lightning man-made?
  

I am afraid that in these days of super self-delusion there may still be some AGW cranks, who will aver that Hurricane Katrina was man-made, or caused by the combustion of fossil fuels. And they will somehow twist the facts and aver that almost every extreme climatic condition is somehow the fault of wicked man. But it is absolutely clear to any normal, logical person, that all these extreme features of Climate and of Weather simply occur, naturally, beyond the power of man.

Where tornadoes are likely, it is perfectly feasible and desirable that at least half the house is built under ground level, that is with a huge basement. In the same way where there is a known flood plain, then houses should be built on stilts, as is already done in some deltaic regions. In fact Local Authorities could and should demand that all houses in flood prone areas are built above garages, and the services of gas and electricity should be above the reach of a normal flood, which would also suit Insurance Companies much better. 

So though a city like Phoenix may have a colossal urban sprawl, such that it take hours to drive out of it, as I know full well, it can hardly be argued that the citizens of Phoenix are affecting the climate. On the contrary, such is the heat there that most every house and Hotel has air-conditioning, which is a way that man has adapted to the local climatic conditions.

To suggest that the adaptation causes the heat is to confuse cause and effect. That is why the present arguments about Global Warming and Climate Change are essentially not scientific arguments at all.

Furthermore we know that the ‘Standard Atmosphere’ used by airline pilots throughout the world, takes the average surface temperature as being 15°C, with the rate of lapse, that is the decline of temperature by altitude as being 2°C for every 1,000 feet. That means that at 7,500 feet the temperature is zero, 0° centigrade. Any travellers on a modern aircraft can confirm this for themselves, as the monitor will show decreasing temperatures, so that at 30,000 feet the temperature is circa Minus 45 Degrees Centigrade.

What conclusion, what logical conclusions must follow from that? If gases are passive, if gases can be warmed or can be cooled, if gases have no inherent temperature of their own, then there is no way that they can cause warming. They are either warmed or cooled.

If we put a potato a microwave oven and switch on the power, the potato can be baked within 10 minutes. But put the same potato in a freezer, how long will it take to bake? Is there a hot spot in the freezer?  And yet our noble scientists have been searching for a Hot Spot at 10 Kilometres high in the Troposphere, that is some 33,000 feet! It is not a question of Science it is a question for Logic; it is a question of Philosophy.

The crux of the argument is philosophical and the nub of it is logic. To suggest that Man is somehow creating radical changes in Climate is an inadmissible conclusion. And as to Man warming the Globe, it is a complete impossibility.

Anthony Bright-Paul, 2011 

 

 Part 2: Prove it to Yourself!

by Anthony Bright-Paul

Many laymen feel that over the subject of Global Warming they must leave the question to the ‘scientist’. That assumes that all scientists agree, which is simply not the case, in spite of claims of ‘consensus’. Nor are scientists per se logical – far from it! Nor are they without interest. In fact, on this issue, the large number of consensual scientists have an interest, mostly undeclared, that they are employed either by UNO or by their own governments precisely to find a connection between Carbon Dioxide and Anthropogenic Global Warming, (AGW in short) for which they are rewarded by funding, massive computers, status, and so on and so forth.

So can a layman legitimately examine the question ‘Is there such a thing as Man-made Global warming?’ Yes, indeed he can, provided he has some clarity of thought, provided he has some logic, and provided that he adheres to well established Laws of Physics, which are largely statements that correspond to normal observation.

So, I declare forthwith that there is no such thing as Anthropogenic Global Warming, that there never has been any Man-Made Global Warming and there never will be. Furthermore, I will ask every layman who reads, or dares to read this script, to prove whatsoever I say to themselves.

I will begin by asking a silly question. What temperature is Oxygen? What temperature is Carbon Dioxide? Well? Do you know the answer?

In fact I asked this question only a day or two ago to two eminent Physicists, somewhat to their surprise. I meant this: Does Carbon Dioxide for example have an inherent temperature or was it derived? That was how I put it to myself.

Actually you know very well just from watching the Weather Forecast on the BBC that the temperature at ground level will vary. By looking at the Weather Channel on my computer I see that the present temperature is 13°C, that it is expected to rise to 19°C and that it will fall to 9°C, today, where I live.

So that means that the gases, which we inhale and exhale, vary in temperature throughout the course of the day and night. Do gases then heat, or do they get heated?

Some gases get heated and retain their heat more easily than others, as John Tyndall demonstrated long ago, most notably Water Vapour and Carbon Dioxide, which came to be known as the Greenhouse Gases.

But they can also be cooled. Dry Ice is the solid form of Carbon Dioxide, and is colder than Water Ice, for which reason it has to handled with care for fear of frost-bite. What does this tell us at once? It is that Carbon Dioxide in no way produces heat. Nor indeed can a gas ‘trap heat’. Try trapping a gas. Certainly you can trap Carbon Dioxide by blowing up a balloon! The skin of the balloon traps the gas, but the gas itself cannot trap anything. Prove it to yourself!

Let us take another example, a homely one. Put a bottle of lager in your fridge. When you open it you will have ice-cold lager. The Carbon Dioxide bubbles, the gas will be equally cold. Pour yourself a pint of Best Bitter and leave it on the windowsill in the sun. What will you get? Warm beer. We don’t need a thermometer to test the difference in temperature – we can taste it in an instant. So the gas has no inherent temperature, but it is derived from its surroundings. 

We had a hot day a couple of weeks back – remember? – so hot that my wife drew the curtains in the living room to keep the room cool. Immediately outside through sliding doors facing south was our conservatory, blazing hot. There was plenty of humidity that day – that is water vapour – so it felt quite insufferable outside too. The water vapour slowed down the exit of the sun’s heat. (Actually, on reflection, even this statement is not completely accurate. Since Water Vapour is in fact tiny droplets of water, all that is happening is that the Sun heats this water, which has a higher thermal capacity than air, and therefore loses its heat more slowly.)

Does that mean that Water Vapour heats the Earth? Well, hardly. There are occasions in mid winter when we have both a severe frost and freezing fog. That freezing fog is water vapour! So Water Vapour like Carbon Dioxide can be warm or cold, depending on outside factors, depending upon Energy, the energy of the Sun.

No, the Greenhouse Gases, which comprise only 1% of the atmosphere and should more rightly be called Insulating Gases, do not produce heat but only retain it for a while – not forever, but for a short time.

Let us take the example of loft insulation. My loft is already insulated by that glass wool stuff. If I were to double that insulation, would that make my home hot? The answer is not at all. That insulation is only preventing some heat loss. In order to produce heat I need to burn something, in my case gas, which in turn heats water that fills my radiators, which hopefully, will radiate heat.

Once this simple idea is understood, we are three-quarters way to understanding that there is no such thing as man-made Global Warming.

Let’s get to the atmosphere. The atmosphere is a pretty big space or place. At ground level the average temperature is 15°C, but for every 1,000 feet the heat diminishes by 2°, so that at 7,500 feet it is 0°C, at 10,000ft it is Minus 5°; at 20,000ft it is some Minus 25°C; and at 30,000 feet, where most airplanes fly, it is some Minus 45° Centigrade.

This is the scale used by Airline Pilots, and is known as Standard Atmosphere and illustrates the Adiabatic Lapse Rate. And this why it is colder on the tops of mountains than down below.

This very day we shall have a wonderful demonstration of this Lapse Rate as the cyclists of the Tour de France tackle the Col du Galibier, where we will see snow on the surrounding mountains. To see the peloton ride towards the snow line will indeed be a spectacle. Doubtless these brave cyclists will exhale an enormous amount of Carbon Dioxide, through their exertions. Will this Carbon Dioxide contribute to Global Warming?  Or is it only the Carbon Dioxide that is produced by the combustion of fossil fuels? Neither!

The Alarmists contend that Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere first absorbs the infra-red – that is the warm part of the spectrum – and then re-emits it every which way including earthwards, and furthermore this warming produces evaporation, a positive feedback, and thus more warming. They even contend that there is a Hot Spot somewhere 10Km above the Tropics. Here I quote from Dr David Evans’ recent talk in Perth, Australia.

“Weather balloons have been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the planet warms, a hot-spot of moist air will develop over the tropics about 10km up, as the layer of moist air expands upwards into the cool dry air above.

During the warming of the late 1970s, 80s, and 90s, the weather balloons found no hot-spot. None at all. Not even a small one. This evidence proves the climate models are fundamentally flawed and they greatly overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide”.

I hope that we have already demonstrated that there is no way that Carbon Dioxide can increase temperature, and as for inhibiting heat loss the very insignificant quantities of CO2 in the atmosphere, some 0.385%, can barely have any effect.

Even some Sceptics seem to believe that these Greenhouse Gases can cause some warming, but only very little, indeed so little as to be negligible. For example Lord Monckton wrote to me as follows:

Dear Mr. Bright-Paul, – The relevance of the easily-replicable Tyndall experiment is that it shows the greenhouse effect to be real, though of course it tells us little about the central question in the climate debate: how much warming a given increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 will cause. Since CO2 is a “well-mixed” gas, its concentration is more or less uniform throughout the atmosphere, so that increases in its concentration will tend near-uniformly to increase the chance that a CO2 molecule will intersect the pathway of a photon of outgoing near-infrared radiation, preventing it from escaping to outer space and consequently reducing the cooling that would otherwise occur. The greenhouse effect, therefore, is real, and some warming is to be expected – all other things being equal – if CO2 concentration is increased.

I will not argue with the above, neither with Tyndall nor Lord Monckton. I will accept that Carbon Dioxide is more or less uniform throughout the atmosphere, (though I do not see how that could be proven) and that the increase in concentrations increases the chance that a CO2 molecule will intersect the pathway of a photon of outgoing near-infra red radiation.

But where will this intersection take place? And when? That is the question. Monckton goes on to say ‘preventing it from escaping to outer space and consequently reducing the cooling that would occur.’ Is it semantics to amend that to saying ‘delaying it from escaping to outer space, and delaying the cooling that will certainly occur?’ There is no possibility that a gas can heat anything, but a gas can be heated or be cooled. It is a fine distinction, but I believe an important and necessary one.

Every night when the sun sets, that part of the Earth in the shadow cools. We humans also cool. When we go to bed we have cover ourselves with blankets or duvets, to prevent the escape of our bodily heat.

Ah, Ha, the Alarmist will answer, the Greenhouse Gases act like an overcoat and are warming the Globe. Not so. If a warm-blooded body wears an overcoat, it will help to retain heat for a passage of time. But put an overcoat on a suit of cold armour, will the overcoat warm the armour? Of course, not!  Say you add gloves to the gauntlets, say you put a bearskin over the helmet, would that make the suit of armour any warmer?  You know the answer, as do I. The armour would remain stubbornly cold.

Everyone knows that heat always rises in a gas or a liquid. We also know that heat by itself always flows from hot to cold and never vice-versa. Put that together with the Adiabatic Lapse Rate, and what do you get? A conundrum. Just how do you heat gases in temperatures well under freezing?  Are we to believe that Carbon Dioxide can reflect heat back from say 30,000 feet where the temperature is minus 45° Centigrade? For that would defy a fundamental Law of Physics, the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics. Are we to believe that somewhere high up n the Troposphere there lurks a hitherto hidden hotspot?

The Globe does warm and the Globe does cool. There have been periods in the earth’s history of Ice Ages and periods of great warmth, like the Holocene Maximum, the Roman Warm Period and the Mediaeval one. Are we to say that man is warming the Planet, with an insignificant addition of Carbon Dioxide to the huge amounts that Nature produces? 

So what does warm the Globe? What does cause the winds? Everyone knows the answer. The sun warms the Globe, and because the warming is uneven the sun also indirectly causes winds. This is elementary meteorology.  Some gases get warmer than others. But the gases are passive, not active purveyors of heat. Far from Anthropogenic Global Warming, the only certainty is Global Cooling. Thank the Good Lord that we are alive in a warm period.

Quod erat demonstrandum. There is no such thing as Anthropogenic Global Warming!!!

Prove it to yourself!

Anthony Bright-Paul, 2011

 

Part 3: The Under-Whelming Evidence

Saturday morning while watching the BBC NewsWatch programme with Raymond Snoddy, a Science Correspondent, defending Professor Steve Jones, spoke of the ‘overwhelming evidence of Global Warming.’  This aroused my curiosity. Had I missed something? What was this overwhelming evidence? And why had not I been overwhelmed?

Professor Steve Jones, defending the impartiality of the BBC also said,  ‘However, one area of concern related to balance, on which issue he recommended that the BBC must make a distinction between well-established fact and opinion to avoid giving free publicity to marginal opinions’.

That is a very curious statement from a famous geneticist. I like the conjunction between ‘well-established fact’ and ‘opinion’. It is perfectly true that there is a large body of opinion that there is such a thing as Anthropogenic Global Warming, but where, pray, are the facts? Where is the evidence?

With atmospheric Carbon Dioxide increasing, there has been no increase in Global Warming, that is, taking the figures of the Climatic Research Unit. And since those figures are to be doubted by many since Climategate, they are totally unreliable anyway. The number of climate stations has fallen dramatically, and there are no climate stations on the 71% of the Earths’ surface that is water. So there appears to be no warming to speak of in the last 10 or 12 years, in spite of all the brouhaha.

There is supposed to be a connection between Carbon Dioxide and this not-evident Global Warming. And the connection rests on one single attribute of Carbon Dioxide, the gas, that is ‘…Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas as it transmits visible light but absorbs strongly in the infrared and near-infrared.’ (from Wikipedia.)

Much has been made of the fact that it absorbs strongly in the infra-red and near infra-red. However, ‘…Thermal radiation is electromagnetic radiation generated by the thermal motion of charged particles in matter. All matter with a temperature greater than absolute zero emits thermal radiation.’All matter? Even a park bench?

On the basis that CO2 absorbs and then re-emits infra-red, a whole scare story has been built up, to the effect that man-made Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is causing this famous Global Warming.

But that is impossible, and most of those scientists who support this view, including Al Gore, know very well that it is wrong. And it is wrong because the atmosphere, the troposphere is already freezing from some 7,500 feet and upwards. By 30,000 feet it is an ice-box at minus 45 degrees centigrade. He knows that very well. Do you imagine that all those alamist scientists don’t know that there is a continuum to Outer Space?  Up there, there is no infra-red to absorb and to re-emit. All those diagrams by Professor Kevin Trenberth are surely flawed..

We have yet more nonsense, in so far that Carbon Dioxide is supposed to ‘trap’ heat. Really? How come then that Carbon Dioxide can be solidified to make Dry Ice, which is colder than Water Ice?

No. Carbon Dioxide can be trapped in a room with the windows all shut. It can be trapped in a car. It can easily be trapped in a kid’s balloon. Gases can be trapped on purpose in those large balloons we see sometimes wandering in the sky, blown by the wind. Gases can be trapped in containers, in gas-holders. Gases can be compressed, and even liquified for ease of transport.

But can a Gas trap anything? Anything  whatsoever? Try it. Just try lassooing something with a gas. Choose any gas you like, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Methane, Carbon Monoxide. Let me know of your success.

In the days of Copernicus, virtually everybody believed that the Earth was the centre of the Universe. Luckily for Copernicus he died just as his great book was published, where he averred that the Earth rotates round the Sun. So he escaped being burned at the stake like Giordano Bruno, who went farther than Copernicus in declaring that the Sun was a star and who compounded his error by also asserting  that Jesus was a Prophet of God and not God himself.

As for Galileo, who had a horror of torture, he was hounded by the Inquisition who tried to trap him into making some heretical statements, while we know now that he fully supported the Copernican thesis that the Earth moved round the Sun, thus showing that the Earth was not the centre of the Universe.

Reading the history of those times it is remarkable to see that the Lutherans, the Protestants who had broken away from the Church of Rome, were nevertheless just as intolerant as the Roman Church and equally ignorant.

So we come to the Law of the Octave as enunciated by Georgy Ivanovich Gudjieff, that everthing in time becomes its own opposite. So we see that the religion of Jesus Christ that taught the Love of God and Surender to the Will of God, (Thy Will be done) had within a few hundred years become a religion of extreme ignorance and intolerance. Where in the scriptures can anywhere be found anything that justified throttling a man gradually with ropes, or burning a man to death for his beliefs?

Such mediaeval intolerance would seem to be a thing of the past. In hindsight it is easy to see that the Churches had become corrupt political bodies, far removed from anything that can be truly called Religion. But in fact we have today an even more insidious and intolerant false religion, which attempts in every way to muzzle Science, and to distort the conclusions that must follow from a correct appreciation of the facts.

And what pray is Science? Anyone who has learnt Latin knows the principal parts of the verb: Scio, scire, scivi, scitum. Science is knowledge. Far from the BBC being impartial, the BBC has resolutely set its face against those scientists who aver that there is no Greenhouse Effect, that there is no man-made Global Warming, that any such warming as does occur is entirely through natural causes, and any changes in climate are likewise caused by Great Nature. Far from being impartial, no discusion, no debate, is allowed. Not since the 8^th of March 2007 when Channel 4 premiered the documentary ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ has there been any meaningful discussion of this subject on TV, least of all by the BBC.

Now we have Professor Steve Jones actively proposing that minority opinions should not be heard at the BBC. But, were they ever? We know very well that if the Sceptics had the opportunity to debate openly through the ‘impartial’ BBC they would trounce their opponents in open debate.

This malaise is world-wide, as only this morning I heard from Australia the attempts of that false religion to prevent the Press there from even allowing a dissenting voice. In Canada a well-known Sceptic is being forced into litigation, effectively having the thumbscrews forced upon him for the great sin of speaking the truth.

How far have we come from the Middle Ages? Not very far. The methods are slightly different, the howling ignorance is the same and the Inquisition wears a Green cloak.

Anthony Bright-Paul

PS  Subject Related Articles

Long-term Variations in Solar Activity and their Apparent Effect on the Earth’s Climate
by K.Lassen  [ http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/solar/lassen1.html ]

 Space weather may also in the long term affect the Earth’s climate. Solar ultra-violet, visible and heat radiation are the primary factors for the Earth’s climate, including global average temperatures, and these energy sources appear to be quite constant. However, many scientists have observed corrrelations between the solar magnetic activity, which is reflected in the sunspot frequency, and climate parameters at the Earth. Sunspots has been recorded through several hundreds of years which makes it possible to compare their variable frequency to climate variations to the extent that reliable climatological records exists. One of the most striking comparisons was published by E. Friis-Christensen og K. Lassen, DMI, in “Science” in 1991. In their work they compared the average temperatureat the northern hemisphere with the average solar activity defined through the interval between successive sunspot maxima. The more active the sun – the shorter the interval: the solar cycle runs more intense. Their results are displayed in the figure below: The red curve illustrates the solar activity, which is generally
increasing through an interval of 100 years, since the cycle length has decreased from around 11.5 years to less than 10 years. Within the same interval the Earth’s average temperature as indicated by the blue curve has increased by approximately 0.7 degree C. Even the finer structures in the two curves have similar appearances. (Reference: Friis-Christensen, E., and K. Lassen, Length of the solar cycle: An indicator of solar activity closely associated with climate, Science, 254, 698-700, 1991).

The red curve illustrates the solar activity, which is generally increasing through an interval of 100 years, since the cycle length has decreased from around 11.5 years to less than 10 years. Within the same interval the Earth’s average temperature as indicated by the blue curve has increased by approximately 0.7 degree C. Even the finer structures in the two curves have similar appearances. (Reference: Friis-Christensen, E., and K. Lassen, Length of the solar cycle: An indicator of solar activity closely associated with climate, Science, 254, 698-700, 1991).

Let’s compare this theory with another “scientific opinion” (supported by NASA).

Earthis the most unique planet in the Solar System because it is the only one that can support life as we know it. Its dense atmosphere serves to protect life on Earth by filtering harmful ultra-violet rays from hitting the surface and vaporizing most meteors before they can strike. In addition, the planet’s average temperatures are comfortable enough to support life.

Earth’s life-sustaining conditions are seen as fortuitous. If the planet had been just 5% closer to the Sun; the surface would have been too hot while if it had been just 1% farther the surface would be a frozen wasteland. These small differences may also have saved the plant life that would eventually make the atmosphere livable by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide and increasing the amount of oxygen in the air through photosynthesis.

Earth enjoys a wide range of temperatures, with average surface temperature rising to a high of 58° C and falling to a low of -88° C. The hottest temperature ever recorded on the planet was 70.7° C and the coldest was -89.2° C. Temperatures are, of course, much hotter at the planet’s core with the inner core believed to hit 7000° C and the outer core around 4000° C to 6000° C. At the mantle, the layer just below the Earth’s crust, temperatures could reach 870° C.
Global warming has also caused an increase in the average surface temperature of the Earth over the last 150 years.

Average temperatures on the planet have risen by 0.8° C since the 1880s, with the worst increases occurring over the past few decades. In fact, the last two decades of the twentieth century were among the hottest in 400 years. Among the areas worst affected by global warming is the Arctic, which has seen average temperatures rise at two times the global average. This development has led some experts to predict that the Arctic may be totally ice-free summer by 2040, or earlier.

Taking Earth’s Temperature