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The Neglected Sun: Why the Sun Precludes Climate Catastrophe
The effect of the sun's activity on climate change has been either scarcely known or overlooked. In this momentous book, Professor Fritz Vahrenholt and Dr Sebastian Luning demonstrate that the critical cause of global temperature change has been, and continues to be, the sun's activity. Vahrenholt and Luning reveal that four concurrent solar cycles master the earth's temperature – a climatic reality upon which man's carbon emissions bear little significance. The sun's present cooling phase, precisely monitored in this work, renders the catastrophic prospects put about by the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change and the 'green agenda' dominant in contemporary Western politics as nothing less than impossible.
412 pages, Paperback
First published February 7, 2012
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July 25, 2016
If you want to understand more about the NATURAL (not human-made) aspects and causes of climate change, read this. If you like to feel guilty for something you haven't done, then read a newspaper. It turns out humans are contributing to global warming, but to a much lesser extent than the media and governments might have you believe. Humans won't destroy the plant with fossil fuels any more that we could flood the Mississippi river by pissing in it. But if it makes you feel better, Toyota will gladly sell you a battery powered car at about a $5,000 premium over a regular car. But ask yourself where the energy to charge those batteries comes from.
November 13, 2017
With Climate Change, the Past is the key to the Present and to the Future
The words “climate change” can technically mean a number of things, but usually when we hear them, we understand that they are referring to something in particular. This would be a defined narrative, an idea which has been repeated so often in the media that it is taken as almost axiomatic. This narrative goes something like this:
“Carbon dioxide produced by mankind is dramatically changing the climate and is leading to unprecedented temperature extremes, storms, floods, and widespread death. If we fail to apply the emergency brake now, and hard, then the climate will be irreparably damaged and there will be little hope for averting the approaching cataclysm. In just a few more years it may be too late. The measures proposed for averting disaster are costly, very costly, but the anticipated damage from climate change will be even more expensive, so there is little alternative but to act quickly and decisively.”
Furthermore, we are told, the science is settled, it represents a scientific consensus, and opponents are rightfully called “climate deniers,” deserving the rhetorical connotations and stigma attached to the label because they might as well be denying the reality of the Holocaust.
Now is this true? Are we even allowed to ask the question? If it is not true, how could we tell? The authors, coming from different backgrounds and having different reasons for developing suspicions of the received narrative, present a detailed, 400-page argument which carefully (and I think persuasively) makes the case that the sun, and only secondarily human activities, are the primary driver for climate change.
This book gives public exposure to the work of many, many climate scientists whose conclusions are deemed politically incorrect and are thus ignored. In the authors’ own words, “We were able to cite hundreds of scientific studies showing that the changes in the sun’s activity and oceanic decadal oscillations are responsible for at least half of the recent warming, which means that the contribution of CO2 is at most half.”
Most of us have no way of evaluating the computer models which predict, to varying degrees, catastrophic future warming with CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning being the sole culprit.
The authors maintain, however, that “the past is the key to the present and to the future,” meaning that it is better to gather data on how the climate has acted in the past, and use this to calibrate projections into the future, than it is to create models calibrated to agree with a pre-ordained conclusion.
This approach reveals a few surprises. First, neither the degree nor the rate of warming we are currently experiencing is unprecedented. Second, warming in the past was not caused by rising CO2 levels. Third, cycles of warming and cooling occurred at regularly repeating intervals over the past several thousand years and beyond, and closely match cycles of increased and decreased solar activity. Fourth, currently accepted climate models which are centered on CO2 cannot reproduce these past warming and cooling events. And finally fifth, the current halt in global warming since the year 2000 was not anticipated by these models, but it is completely consistent with a sun-centered approach which takes into consideration not only CO2 but also solar cycles and ocean oscillations.
So here I, the average Joe, the taxpayer who doesn’t have in-depth scientific knowledge of the issues, is being asked to adjudicate between two opposing claims. And it does matter, because the choice I and the rest of society make will have a significant impact on the world our children inhabit. If the alarmists (if I may use that pejorative label for the sake of simplicity) are right, we have a moral obligation to give up our financial prosperity in order to maintain a world that is inhabitable for future generations.
And it just so happens that it is this position (that of the alarmists) that “holds the microphone,” so to speak. We are bombarded with claims that the “science is settled” and only the ignorant and those with financial interests in maintaining the status quo would disagree.
It seems to me that if this boils down to a matter of trust, and to some degree it does, then we are entitled to see if that trust is earned. And we can do that in a few ways. One is by listening carefully to the alarmists and trying to see if they are telling us the whole story, or are they selectively publicizing information that furthers their cause on the one hand, while withholding information that does not, on the other hand.
One testable example that leaps to mind is Al Gore’s new book, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.” Early in the book he prominently displays a graph of increasing temperatures over the past number of decades. No comment is given to the stagnating temperatures between the years 2000 and 2014, but we see an apparent resumption in the warming in the final two years, 2015 and 2016.
So here Mr. Gore has told us part of the story. But has he told us the whole thing? No. He has utterly ignored the vast literature cited in “The Neglected Sun” which carefully shows how natural climate oscillations, and particularly an unusually active sun, have contributed, not only to recent temperature fluctuations, but also to those seen throughout the historic temperature record.
And second, he has neglected to mention what our authors have made clear, namely, that it is inappropriate to include El Niño years in long-term projections, because these phenomena, which can produce remarkable short-term increases in global temperatures, are just that: they are short-term blips that vanish after a couple of years. Al Gore leaves us with the impression that these two years are further evidence of man-made global warming when the reality is nothing more than they are in fact El Niño years.
Another way the average Joe can navigate this confusing terrain is to spend some time reading “The Neglected Sun.” It is not hard to read, the citations to peer-reviewed literature are numerous, and as it does give a place, albeit a secondary one, for CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, it gives a feeling of balance, and also an admission of the infancy of much of our knowledge, an admission that is entirely missing from popular presentations from the other side, in particular from Al Gore.
Spend some time reading the book and it will become clear that the claims of scientific consensus and that the science is settled are false. And it seems to me that when what we can test is found to be wanting, this gives us reason to be suspicious of that which we cannot test. In other words, it looks sneaky and it looks like they haven’t got the goods.
Now the authors make it clear that they are not denying that we need to move away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, but they are arguing that because projections based on solar activity are actually going to give us a few decades of cooling, we can make the change in a rational, rather than a panicked, way.
The stakes are high, as we are on the verge of decisions that can dramatically alter the prosperity of not only our children and grandchildren, but of those in developing countries that need at least short-term access to fossil fuels in order to keep from sliding further backwards in poverty.
Al Gore and the alarmists are right about one thing: the climate debate is a moral issue, but just not in the way they see it. Because if our authors are right, then we are faced with the following reality: as much of an economic inconvenience that an abrupt shift away from fossil fuels would be for those of us in the wealthy West, it is actually a life-and-death situation for those in the developing world whose ability to move out of poverty would be taken away from them.
And that is immoral.
The words “climate change” can technically mean a number of things, but usually when we hear them, we understand that they are referring to something in particular. This would be a defined narrative, an idea which has been repeated so often in the media that it is taken as almost axiomatic. This narrative goes something like this:
“Carbon dioxide produced by mankind is dramatically changing the climate and is leading to unprecedented temperature extremes, storms, floods, and widespread death. If we fail to apply the emergency brake now, and hard, then the climate will be irreparably damaged and there will be little hope for averting the approaching cataclysm. In just a few more years it may be too late. The measures proposed for averting disaster are costly, very costly, but the anticipated damage from climate change will be even more expensive, so there is little alternative but to act quickly and decisively.”
Furthermore, we are told, the science is settled, it represents a scientific consensus, and opponents are rightfully called “climate deniers,” deserving the rhetorical connotations and stigma attached to the label because they might as well be denying the reality of the Holocaust.
Now is this true? Are we even allowed to ask the question? If it is not true, how could we tell? The authors, coming from different backgrounds and having different reasons for developing suspicions of the received narrative, present a detailed, 400-page argument which carefully (and I think persuasively) makes the case that the sun, and only secondarily human activities, are the primary driver for climate change.
This book gives public exposure to the work of many, many climate scientists whose conclusions are deemed politically incorrect and are thus ignored. In the authors’ own words, “We were able to cite hundreds of scientific studies showing that the changes in the sun’s activity and oceanic decadal oscillations are responsible for at least half of the recent warming, which means that the contribution of CO2 is at most half.”
Most of us have no way of evaluating the computer models which predict, to varying degrees, catastrophic future warming with CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning being the sole culprit.
The authors maintain, however, that “the past is the key to the present and to the future,” meaning that it is better to gather data on how the climate has acted in the past, and use this to calibrate projections into the future, than it is to create models calibrated to agree with a pre-ordained conclusion.
This approach reveals a few surprises. First, neither the degree nor the rate of warming we are currently experiencing is unprecedented. Second, warming in the past was not caused by rising CO2 levels. Third, cycles of warming and cooling occurred at regularly repeating intervals over the past several thousand years and beyond, and closely match cycles of increased and decreased solar activity. Fourth, currently accepted climate models which are centered on CO2 cannot reproduce these past warming and cooling events. And finally fifth, the current halt in global warming since the year 2000 was not anticipated by these models, but it is completely consistent with a sun-centered approach which takes into consideration not only CO2 but also solar cycles and ocean oscillations.
So here I, the average Joe, the taxpayer who doesn’t have in-depth scientific knowledge of the issues, is being asked to adjudicate between two opposing claims. And it does matter, because the choice I and the rest of society make will have a significant impact on the world our children inhabit. If the alarmists (if I may use that pejorative label for the sake of simplicity) are right, we have a moral obligation to give up our financial prosperity in order to maintain a world that is inhabitable for future generations.
And it just so happens that it is this position (that of the alarmists) that “holds the microphone,” so to speak. We are bombarded with claims that the “science is settled” and only the ignorant and those with financial interests in maintaining the status quo would disagree.
It seems to me that if this boils down to a matter of trust, and to some degree it does, then we are entitled to see if that trust is earned. And we can do that in a few ways. One is by listening carefully to the alarmists and trying to see if they are telling us the whole story, or are they selectively publicizing information that furthers their cause on the one hand, while withholding information that does not, on the other hand.
One testable example that leaps to mind is Al Gore’s new book, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.” Early in the book he prominently displays a graph of increasing temperatures over the past number of decades. No comment is given to the stagnating temperatures between the years 2000 and 2014, but we see an apparent resumption in the warming in the final two years, 2015 and 2016.
So here Mr. Gore has told us part of the story. But has he told us the whole thing? No. He has utterly ignored the vast literature cited in “The Neglected Sun” which carefully shows how natural climate oscillations, and particularly an unusually active sun, have contributed, not only to recent temperature fluctuations, but also to those seen throughout the historic temperature record.
And second, he has neglected to mention what our authors have made clear, namely, that it is inappropriate to include El Niño years in long-term projections, because these phenomena, which can produce remarkable short-term increases in global temperatures, are just that: they are short-term blips that vanish after a couple of years. Al Gore leaves us with the impression that these two years are further evidence of man-made global warming when the reality is nothing more than they are in fact El Niño years.
Another way the average Joe can navigate this confusing terrain is to spend some time reading “The Neglected Sun.” It is not hard to read, the citations to peer-reviewed literature are numerous, and as it does give a place, albeit a secondary one, for CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, it gives a feeling of balance, and also an admission of the infancy of much of our knowledge, an admission that is entirely missing from popular presentations from the other side, in particular from Al Gore.
Spend some time reading the book and it will become clear that the claims of scientific consensus and that the science is settled are false. And it seems to me that when what we can test is found to be wanting, this gives us reason to be suspicious of that which we cannot test. In other words, it looks sneaky and it looks like they haven’t got the goods.
Now the authors make it clear that they are not denying that we need to move away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, but they are arguing that because projections based on solar activity are actually going to give us a few decades of cooling, we can make the change in a rational, rather than a panicked, way.
The stakes are high, as we are on the verge of decisions that can dramatically alter the prosperity of not only our children and grandchildren, but of those in developing countries that need at least short-term access to fossil fuels in order to keep from sliding further backwards in poverty.
Al Gore and the alarmists are right about one thing: the climate debate is a moral issue, but just not in the way they see it. Because if our authors are right, then we are faced with the following reality: as much of an economic inconvenience that an abrupt shift away from fossil fuels would be for those of us in the wealthy West, it is actually a life-and-death situation for those in the developing world whose ability to move out of poverty would be taken away from them.
And that is immoral.
February 25, 2026
The courage to tell the truth. Glad the the authors have survived the purges and inquisitions.
This is my review of the German edition. The book is so important that I was sure there would soon be an English version. You can have this German edition shipped to the US from Amazon Germany. There is a Kindle edition in German, which for reasons unknown is not yet available outside of Germany/Switzerland/Austria. I recommend the Kindle for one big reason. Amazingly for a scientific book, the German edition has no index (!) and no bibliography. You need a searchable document.
The authors of this book got fed up with the sloppy science and outright mendacity of the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control. They wrote a book to set the record straight.
Their bottom line is that the global warming which the world witnessed between 1975 and 2000 is the result of the confluence of many factors. The IPCC is willing to see only one factor: anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
Vahrenholt and Lüning believe that the rapid warming up through the year 2000 and was due to several coincident factors, most importantly having to do with sun cycles. It has long been known that solar radiation varies over time in a predictable fashion. There are solar cycles of 11, 22, 87, 210, 1000 and 2300 year durations. When they overlap, it can result in appreciable variation.
More important than the variations in the amount of radiant energy coming from the sun is the variation in the sun's magnetic field. This is not visible, but has a large effect on the volume of cosmic rays entering the Earth's atmosphere. When the sun's magnetic field is strong, it tends to deflect the cosmic rays from Earth.
Cosmic rays collide with gases in the atmosphere, resulting among other things in the particles which seed clouds. More cosmic rays, more clouds. And, the more clouds there are, the more light is reflected back out into space. It took an experiment in the European laboratory for particle physics, CERN, to prove a theory about the mechanism by which clouds are seeded. The vested interests in IPCC appear to have worked to hinder the scientists' access to CERN to conduct their experiment.
The IPCC is quite important in the allocation of funding for climate research. Needless to say, groups that agree with them stand a better chance of getting funded. This creates consensus, but it is the antithesis of good science. Among other things, the IPCC has seeded and funded computerized climate change models in centers all over the world. Read my review of A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Infrastructures) for an appreciation of how great a task this is, and how much good work is actually going into it. Incidentally, this book, by a computer guy, not a climatologist, makes no mention of the inclusion of sun cyles in the IPCC models, and mentions the major cycles only in passing. He concentrates the problems of interpolating and interpreting actual measurements in the past century or so.
The problem is that a computerized model is only as good as the parameters and assumptions which go into it. Vahrenholt and Lüning claim that none of the models now in use to anywhere near an adequate job of taking into account the sun's influence on climate variability. The IPCC actively discourages it, and they control the purse strings. Conversely, all of the models must be based on assumptions about unknowable factors, such as how clouds are seeded, the effect of soot in the atmosphere, the effect of increased carbon dioxide on vegetation growth, and many other factors. Scientists can be open and honest in setting these assumptions, but they can equally well look at them as "fudge factors" to be adjusted in order to make the models fit their preconceptions. It depends on the integrity of the scientists, and that in turn depends on their willingness to bite the hand that feeds them.
Vahrenholt's specialty is renewable energy. The IPCC asked him in 2009 to proofread its summary report on renewable energy. He noted 293 errors and oversights in the thousand page report. On the first of February 2010 he cornered an IPCC expert at a conference in Washington and asked why the IPCC had not acted on his comments. They essentially brushed him off. He was not an expert in climate change, but he does know renewable energy pretty well. This led him to suspect sloppy science and other ways. He was alert to the scandal concerning the supposedly melting glaciers in the Himalayas. The IPCC's 2007 report contained the alarming prediction that they would disappear by 2035. They pooh-poohed critics, and it took them two years to correct this glaring error. Then there was the East Anglia e-mail scandal, in which it was clear that scientists were fudging the data in order to inflate the apparent danger of global warming. The whole thing smelled of foul play and politics, so he decided to do book.
Sebastian Lüning is a climate scientist. He was appalled by the deceit involved in concocting the "Hockey Stick Illusion," the way in which the authors omitted and fudged data in order to make it as scary story as possible so they could obtain funding, drive the political process, and gain political power. The co-authors invited shorter guest chapters by leading scientists like Henrik Svensmark whose work they have woven into their thesis.
The IPCC is an elaborate pyramid. Thousands of scientists all over the world participate at the working level. The papers they publish are assembled and summarized by designated groups of scientists, who write the lengthy working papers which the organization publishes. There is a third level of summary in which the results are rolled up into executive summaries, which are all that most people are willing to read. You can find this all by googling "IPCC".
In addition to being divided into three tiers, the IPCC working groups are divided functionally, in order to address the effects of global warming. One working group focuses on the science, whether or not global warming is real and what causes it. A second working group assesses the likely impact on human populations, and a third working group is charged with formulating policy proposals suggesting what government should do about it.
Needless to say this is highly political. The people who summarize other people's work have the ability to editorialize, to slant the work one way or another. The people who are charged with coming up with policy have a vested interest in the existence of the problem that their policies supposed to solve. In short, this is a microcosm of all of the well-known problems of the United Nations, or in fact it almost any large bureaucracy. The IPCC chief editors have been taken from Greenpeace, hardly a seedbed of scientific neutrality. Others are associated with radical groups. Google "WBGU Germany" for their position papers, which call for complete elimination of carbon fuels by 2050 through a massive, government-directed investment and government-imposed change in every aspect of our lifestyles.
There is a vast vested interest in carbon dioxide being the primary driver of global warming. Entire industries depend on it: solar cells, wind energy, the infant carbon sequestration industry, and so on. Many political careers, such as that of Al Gore, likewise depend on it. It is a fundamental plank in the platform of organizations such as Germany's Green party. The argument is something like this: (1) greedy, self-absorbed Westerners are despoiling the environment and throwing so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that it will poison future generations, and therefore (2) government should have the power to strongly regulate our consumption of energy, and therefore our lifestyles.
Vahrenholt and Lüning fully concur that the world needs to wean itself off of fossil fuels in the long run. Carbon dioxide does contribute to global warming, and excessive global warming is not a good thing. They believe, however, that the heedless stampede towards expensive short-term solutions is a dangerous waste of money. If their thesis is right, we have several decades to resolve the problem. It is not as though oceans are going to rise and we will all drown tomorrow. To put numbers on it, the IPCC has established a bogey of two degrees centigrade for acceptable global warming over the next century. In doing so, they are highly confident that the goal cannot be met and that there will be continued need for strong measures (and for granting funding and power to themselves). Vahrenholt and Lüning claim that because greenhouse gases are only one of many factors which drove the observed global warming in the last quarter of the last century, the two degree benchmark will be easily met without drastic measures. We have time enough to take rational, measured steps toward a solution.
There is genuine anger in this book, towards the IPCC in general and the perpetrators of the most egregious frauds. These include Michael Mann and his infamous "hockey stick," and Al Gore and his Nobel Prize. These are careerists, men of no principle and no love of the truth, who by getting huge amounts of resources diverted to unproductive ends (especially themselves), proved themselves to be significant impediments to the improvement of understanding of our climate.
It is important that this book appear in German. Several similar volumes have appeared in English, most recently S Fred Singer's masterful, 880-page [[ASIN:1934791369 Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report on the Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change]] in 2009. However, as Germany is the epicenter of the green movement, the German public needs access to the full range of scholarship, including the negative side.
Authoring this book will certainly change the career trajectories of both authors. They will perforce be excluded from research circles dominated by the IPCC, which means, as of today, most of the climate research community. I congratulate them for their courage, wish them luck, and hope that courageous politicians and philanthropists will support some honest research in this vitally important area.
Errors in the IPCC analysis: "Global sea levels rose continually and at an increasing rate throughout the 20th century" Wrong. They were using land-based benchmarks on coastlines which were sinking due to plate tectonics. Satellites, which reference the earth's center of gravity, show a declining rate of increase.
What rates of sulfur dioxide emissions to model? Models differ, some using 1960, some 2000 as the date of maximum human SO2 emissions. Oddly, the dates selected seem to be the ones which display the desired modelling results.
Shrinking of icecaps, glaciers and sea ice. These are shown to be cyclical phenomena. The IPCC ignores their cyclical nature, and overestimates the actual amounts. The press emphasizes the loss of ice in one place (north pole) and ignores the opposite on the other pole. There is absolutely no prediction for, or explanation of, the major re-icing of the North Pole in 2013.
I add in October 2013 that the 5th Assessment Report is now in draft, and the IPCC seems to be doubling down on its commitment to the same story line. Google "ipcc.ch" They dismiss, in only a few words, the notion that cloud cover has any relationship to solar activity. Expect Vahrenhold, Luening and Fred Singer to take a hard look at how they came to the conclusion, and how they conclude that global warming continues apace in the face of a growing body of evidence that it has gone nowhere in 17 years. Note that the 2013 summary for decision makers plays down the short term and plays up global warming over the past century. This is quite the opposite of what they did with the "hockey stick" in the third assessment.
This is my review of the German edition. The book is so important that I was sure there would soon be an English version. You can have this German edition shipped to the US from Amazon Germany. There is a Kindle edition in German, which for reasons unknown is not yet available outside of Germany/Switzerland/Austria. I recommend the Kindle for one big reason. Amazingly for a scientific book, the German edition has no index (!) and no bibliography. You need a searchable document.
The authors of this book got fed up with the sloppy science and outright mendacity of the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control. They wrote a book to set the record straight.
Their bottom line is that the global warming which the world witnessed between 1975 and 2000 is the result of the confluence of many factors. The IPCC is willing to see only one factor: anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
Vahrenholt and Lüning believe that the rapid warming up through the year 2000 and was due to several coincident factors, most importantly having to do with sun cycles. It has long been known that solar radiation varies over time in a predictable fashion. There are solar cycles of 11, 22, 87, 210, 1000 and 2300 year durations. When they overlap, it can result in appreciable variation.
More important than the variations in the amount of radiant energy coming from the sun is the variation in the sun's magnetic field. This is not visible, but has a large effect on the volume of cosmic rays entering the Earth's atmosphere. When the sun's magnetic field is strong, it tends to deflect the cosmic rays from Earth.
Cosmic rays collide with gases in the atmosphere, resulting among other things in the particles which seed clouds. More cosmic rays, more clouds. And, the more clouds there are, the more light is reflected back out into space. It took an experiment in the European laboratory for particle physics, CERN, to prove a theory about the mechanism by which clouds are seeded. The vested interests in IPCC appear to have worked to hinder the scientists' access to CERN to conduct their experiment.
The IPCC is quite important in the allocation of funding for climate research. Needless to say, groups that agree with them stand a better chance of getting funded. This creates consensus, but it is the antithesis of good science. Among other things, the IPCC has seeded and funded computerized climate change models in centers all over the world. Read my review of A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Infrastructures) for an appreciation of how great a task this is, and how much good work is actually going into it. Incidentally, this book, by a computer guy, not a climatologist, makes no mention of the inclusion of sun cyles in the IPCC models, and mentions the major cycles only in passing. He concentrates the problems of interpolating and interpreting actual measurements in the past century or so.
The problem is that a computerized model is only as good as the parameters and assumptions which go into it. Vahrenholt and Lüning claim that none of the models now in use to anywhere near an adequate job of taking into account the sun's influence on climate variability. The IPCC actively discourages it, and they control the purse strings. Conversely, all of the models must be based on assumptions about unknowable factors, such as how clouds are seeded, the effect of soot in the atmosphere, the effect of increased carbon dioxide on vegetation growth, and many other factors. Scientists can be open and honest in setting these assumptions, but they can equally well look at them as "fudge factors" to be adjusted in order to make the models fit their preconceptions. It depends on the integrity of the scientists, and that in turn depends on their willingness to bite the hand that feeds them.
Vahrenholt's specialty is renewable energy. The IPCC asked him in 2009 to proofread its summary report on renewable energy. He noted 293 errors and oversights in the thousand page report. On the first of February 2010 he cornered an IPCC expert at a conference in Washington and asked why the IPCC had not acted on his comments. They essentially brushed him off. He was not an expert in climate change, but he does know renewable energy pretty well. This led him to suspect sloppy science and other ways. He was alert to the scandal concerning the supposedly melting glaciers in the Himalayas. The IPCC's 2007 report contained the alarming prediction that they would disappear by 2035. They pooh-poohed critics, and it took them two years to correct this glaring error. Then there was the East Anglia e-mail scandal, in which it was clear that scientists were fudging the data in order to inflate the apparent danger of global warming. The whole thing smelled of foul play and politics, so he decided to do book.
Sebastian Lüning is a climate scientist. He was appalled by the deceit involved in concocting the "Hockey Stick Illusion," the way in which the authors omitted and fudged data in order to make it as scary story as possible so they could obtain funding, drive the political process, and gain political power. The co-authors invited shorter guest chapters by leading scientists like Henrik Svensmark whose work they have woven into their thesis.
The IPCC is an elaborate pyramid. Thousands of scientists all over the world participate at the working level. The papers they publish are assembled and summarized by designated groups of scientists, who write the lengthy working papers which the organization publishes. There is a third level of summary in which the results are rolled up into executive summaries, which are all that most people are willing to read. You can find this all by googling "IPCC".
In addition to being divided into three tiers, the IPCC working groups are divided functionally, in order to address the effects of global warming. One working group focuses on the science, whether or not global warming is real and what causes it. A second working group assesses the likely impact on human populations, and a third working group is charged with formulating policy proposals suggesting what government should do about it.
Needless to say this is highly political. The people who summarize other people's work have the ability to editorialize, to slant the work one way or another. The people who are charged with coming up with policy have a vested interest in the existence of the problem that their policies supposed to solve. In short, this is a microcosm of all of the well-known problems of the United Nations, or in fact it almost any large bureaucracy. The IPCC chief editors have been taken from Greenpeace, hardly a seedbed of scientific neutrality. Others are associated with radical groups. Google "WBGU Germany" for their position papers, which call for complete elimination of carbon fuels by 2050 through a massive, government-directed investment and government-imposed change in every aspect of our lifestyles.
There is a vast vested interest in carbon dioxide being the primary driver of global warming. Entire industries depend on it: solar cells, wind energy, the infant carbon sequestration industry, and so on. Many political careers, such as that of Al Gore, likewise depend on it. It is a fundamental plank in the platform of organizations such as Germany's Green party. The argument is something like this: (1) greedy, self-absorbed Westerners are despoiling the environment and throwing so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that it will poison future generations, and therefore (2) government should have the power to strongly regulate our consumption of energy, and therefore our lifestyles.
Vahrenholt and Lüning fully concur that the world needs to wean itself off of fossil fuels in the long run. Carbon dioxide does contribute to global warming, and excessive global warming is not a good thing. They believe, however, that the heedless stampede towards expensive short-term solutions is a dangerous waste of money. If their thesis is right, we have several decades to resolve the problem. It is not as though oceans are going to rise and we will all drown tomorrow. To put numbers on it, the IPCC has established a bogey of two degrees centigrade for acceptable global warming over the next century. In doing so, they are highly confident that the goal cannot be met and that there will be continued need for strong measures (and for granting funding and power to themselves). Vahrenholt and Lüning claim that because greenhouse gases are only one of many factors which drove the observed global warming in the last quarter of the last century, the two degree benchmark will be easily met without drastic measures. We have time enough to take rational, measured steps toward a solution.
There is genuine anger in this book, towards the IPCC in general and the perpetrators of the most egregious frauds. These include Michael Mann and his infamous "hockey stick," and Al Gore and his Nobel Prize. These are careerists, men of no principle and no love of the truth, who by getting huge amounts of resources diverted to unproductive ends (especially themselves), proved themselves to be significant impediments to the improvement of understanding of our climate.
It is important that this book appear in German. Several similar volumes have appeared in English, most recently S Fred Singer's masterful, 880-page [[ASIN:1934791369 Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report on the Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change]] in 2009. However, as Germany is the epicenter of the green movement, the German public needs access to the full range of scholarship, including the negative side.
Authoring this book will certainly change the career trajectories of both authors. They will perforce be excluded from research circles dominated by the IPCC, which means, as of today, most of the climate research community. I congratulate them for their courage, wish them luck, and hope that courageous politicians and philanthropists will support some honest research in this vitally important area.
Errors in the IPCC analysis: "Global sea levels rose continually and at an increasing rate throughout the 20th century" Wrong. They were using land-based benchmarks on coastlines which were sinking due to plate tectonics. Satellites, which reference the earth's center of gravity, show a declining rate of increase.
What rates of sulfur dioxide emissions to model? Models differ, some using 1960, some 2000 as the date of maximum human SO2 emissions. Oddly, the dates selected seem to be the ones which display the desired modelling results.
Shrinking of icecaps, glaciers and sea ice. These are shown to be cyclical phenomena. The IPCC ignores their cyclical nature, and overestimates the actual amounts. The press emphasizes the loss of ice in one place (north pole) and ignores the opposite on the other pole. There is absolutely no prediction for, or explanation of, the major re-icing of the North Pole in 2013.
I add in October 2013 that the 5th Assessment Report is now in draft, and the IPCC seems to be doubling down on its commitment to the same story line. Google "ipcc.ch" They dismiss, in only a few words, the notion that cloud cover has any relationship to solar activity. Expect Vahrenhold, Luening and Fred Singer to take a hard look at how they came to the conclusion, and how they conclude that global warming continues apace in the face of a growing body of evidence that it has gone nowhere in 17 years. Note that the 2013 summary for decision makers plays down the short term and plays up global warming over the past century. This is quite the opposite of what they did with the "hockey stick" in the third assessment.
November 13, 2017
With Climate Change, the Past is the key to the Present and to the Future
The words “climate change” can technically mean a number of things, but usually when we hear them, we understand that they are referring to something in particular. This would be a defined narrative, an idea which has been repeated so often in the media that it is taken as almost axiomatic. This narrative goes something like this:
“Carbon dioxide produced by mankind is dramatically changing the climate and is leading to unprecedented temperature extremes, storms, floods, and widespread death. If we fail to apply the emergency brake now, and hard, then the climate will be irreparably damaged and there will be little hope for averting the approaching cataclysm. In just a few more years it may be too late. The measures proposed for averting disaster are costly, very costly, but the anticipated damage from climate change will be even more expensive, so there is little alternative but to act quickly and decisively.”
Furthermore, we are told, the science is settled, it represents a scientific consensus, and opponents are rightfully called “climate deniers,” deserving the rhetorical connotations and stigma attached to the label because they might as well be denying the reality of the Holocaust.
Now is this true? Are we even allowed to ask the question? If it is not true, how could we tell? The authors, coming from different backgrounds and having different reasons for developing suspicions of the received narrative, present a detailed, 400-page argument which carefully (and I think persuasively) makes the case that the sun, and only secondarily human activities, are the primary driver for climate change.
This book gives public exposure to the work of many, many climate scientists whose conclusions are deemed politically incorrect and are thus ignored. In the authors’ own words, “We were able to cite hundreds of scientific studies showing that the changes in the sun’s activity and oceanic decadal oscillations are responsible for at least half of the recent warming, which means that the contribution of CO2 is at most half.”
Most of us have no way of evaluating the computer models which predict, to varying degrees, catastrophic future warming with CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning being the sole culprit.
The authors maintain, however, that “the past is the key to the present and to the future,” meaning that it is better to gather data on how the climate has acted in the past, and use this to calibrate projections into the future, than it is to create models calibrated to agree with a pre-ordained conclusion.
This approach reveals a few surprises. First, neither the degree nor the rate of warming we are currently experiencing is unprecedented. Second, warming in the past was not caused by rising CO2 levels. Third, cycles of warming and cooling occurred at regularly repeating intervals over the past several thousand years and beyond, and closely match cycles of increased and decreased solar activity. Fourth, currently accepted climate models which are centered on CO2 cannot reproduce these past warming and cooling events. And finally fifth, the current halt in global warming since the year 2000 was not anticipated by these models, but it is completely consistent with a sun-centered approach which takes into consideration not only CO2 but also solar cycles and ocean oscillations.
So here I, the average Joe, the taxpayer who doesn’t have in-depth scientific knowledge of the issues, is being asked to adjudicate between two opposing claims. And it does matter, because the choice I and the rest of society make will have a significant impact on the world our children inhabit. If the alarmists (if I may use that pejorative label for the sake of simplicity) are right, we have a moral obligation to give up our financial prosperity in order to maintain a world that is inhabitable for future generations.
And it just so happens that it is this position (that of the alarmists) that “holds the microphone,” so to speak. We are bombarded with claims that the “science is settled” and only the ignorant and those with financial interests in maintaining the status quo would disagree.
It seems to me that if this boils down to a matter of trust, and to some degree it does, then we are entitled to see if that trust is earned. And we can do that in a few ways. One is by listening carefully to the alarmists and trying to see if they are telling us the whole story, or are they selectively publicizing information that furthers their cause on the one hand, while withholding information that does not, on the other hand.
One testable example that leaps to mind is Al Gore’s new book, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.” Early in the book he prominently displays a graph of increasing temperatures over the past number of decades. No comment is given to the stagnating temperatures between the years 2000 and 2014, but we see an apparent resumption in the warming in the final two years, 2015 and 2016.
So here Mr. Gore has told us part of the story. But has he told us the whole thing? No. He has utterly ignored the vast literature cited in “The Neglected Sun” which carefully shows how natural climate oscillations, and particularly an unusually active sun, have contributed, not only to recent temperature fluctuations, but also to those seen throughout the historic temperature record.
And second, he has neglected to mention what our authors have made clear, namely, that it is inappropriate to include El Niño years in long-term projections, because these phenomena, which can produce remarkable short-term increases in global temperatures, are just that: they are short-term blips that vanish after a couple of years. Al Gore leaves us with the impression that these two years are further evidence of man-made global warming when the reality is nothing more than they are in fact El Niño years.
Another way the average Joe can navigate this confusing terrain is to spend some time reading “The Neglected Sun.” It is not hard to read, the citations to peer-reviewed literature are numerous, and as it does give a place, albeit a secondary one, for CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, it gives a feeling of balance, and also an admission of the infancy of much of our knowledge, an admission that is entirely missing from popular presentations from the other side, in particular from Al Gore.
Spend some time reading the book and it will become clear that the claims of scientific consensus and that the science is settled are false. And it seems to me that when what we can test is found to be wanting, this gives us reason to be suspicious of that which we cannot test. In other words, it looks sneaky and it looks like they haven’t got the goods.
Now the authors make it clear that they are not denying that we need to move away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, but they are arguing that because projections based on solar activity are actually going to give us a few decades of cooling, we can make the change in a rational, rather than a panicked, way.
The stakes are high, as we are on the verge of decisions that can dramatically alter the prosperity of not only our children and grandchildren, but of those in developing countries that need at least short-term access to fossil fuels in order to keep from sliding further backwards in poverty.
Al Gore and the alarmists are right about one thing: the climate debate is a moral issue, but just not in the way they see it. Because if our authors are right, then we are faced with the following reality: as much of an economic inconvenience that an abrupt shift away from fossil fuels would be for those of us in the wealthy West, it is actually a life-and-death situation for those in the developing world whose ability to move out of poverty would be taken away from them.
And that is immoral.
The words “climate change” can technically mean a number of things, but usually when we hear them, we understand that they are referring to something in particular. This would be a defined narrative, an idea which has been repeated so often in the media that it is taken as almost axiomatic. This narrative goes something like this:
“Carbon dioxide produced by mankind is dramatically changing the climate and is leading to unprecedented temperature extremes, storms, floods, and widespread death. If we fail to apply the emergency brake now, and hard, then the climate will be irreparably damaged and there will be little hope for averting the approaching cataclysm. In just a few more years it may be too late. The measures proposed for averting disaster are costly, very costly, but the anticipated damage from climate change will be even more expensive, so there is little alternative but to act quickly and decisively.”
Furthermore, we are told, the science is settled, it represents a scientific consensus, and opponents are rightfully called “climate deniers,” deserving the rhetorical connotations and stigma attached to the label because they might as well be denying the reality of the Holocaust.
Now is this true? Are we even allowed to ask the question? If it is not true, how could we tell? The authors, coming from different backgrounds and having different reasons for developing suspicions of the received narrative, present a detailed, 400-page argument which carefully (and I think persuasively) makes the case that the sun, and only secondarily human activities, are the primary driver for climate change.
This book gives public exposure to the work of many, many climate scientists whose conclusions are deemed politically incorrect and are thus ignored. In the authors’ own words, “We were able to cite hundreds of scientific studies showing that the changes in the sun’s activity and oceanic decadal oscillations are responsible for at least half of the recent warming, which means that the contribution of CO2 is at most half.”
Most of us have no way of evaluating the computer models which predict, to varying degrees, catastrophic future warming with CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning being the sole culprit.
The authors maintain, however, that “the past is the key to the present and to the future,” meaning that it is better to gather data on how the climate has acted in the past, and use this to calibrate projections into the future, than it is to create models calibrated to agree with a pre-ordained conclusion.
This approach reveals a few surprises. First, neither the degree nor the rate of warming we are currently experiencing is unprecedented. Second, warming in the past was not caused by rising CO2 levels. Third, cycles of warming and cooling occurred at regularly repeating intervals over the past several thousand years and beyond, and closely match cycles of increased and decreased solar activity. Fourth, currently accepted climate models which are centered on CO2 cannot reproduce these past warming and cooling events. And finally fifth, the current halt in global warming since the year 2000 was not anticipated by these models, but it is completely consistent with a sun-centered approach which takes into consideration not only CO2 but also solar cycles and ocean oscillations.
So here I, the average Joe, the taxpayer who doesn’t have in-depth scientific knowledge of the issues, is being asked to adjudicate between two opposing claims. And it does matter, because the choice I and the rest of society make will have a significant impact on the world our children inhabit. If the alarmists (if I may use that pejorative label for the sake of simplicity) are right, we have a moral obligation to give up our financial prosperity in order to maintain a world that is inhabitable for future generations.
And it just so happens that it is this position (that of the alarmists) that “holds the microphone,” so to speak. We are bombarded with claims that the “science is settled” and only the ignorant and those with financial interests in maintaining the status quo would disagree.
It seems to me that if this boils down to a matter of trust, and to some degree it does, then we are entitled to see if that trust is earned. And we can do that in a few ways. One is by listening carefully to the alarmists and trying to see if they are telling us the whole story, or are they selectively publicizing information that furthers their cause on the one hand, while withholding information that does not, on the other hand.
One testable example that leaps to mind is Al Gore’s new book, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.” Early in the book he prominently displays a graph of increasing temperatures over the past number of decades. No comment is given to the stagnating temperatures between the years 2000 and 2014, but we see an apparent resumption in the warming in the final two years, 2015 and 2016.
So here Mr. Gore has told us part of the story. But has he told us the whole thing? No. He has utterly ignored the vast literature cited in “The Neglected Sun” which carefully shows how natural climate oscillations, and particularly an unusually active sun, have contributed, not only to recent temperature fluctuations, but also to those seen throughout the historic temperature record.
And second, he has neglected to mention what our authors have made clear, namely, that it is inappropriate to include El Niño years in long-term projections, because these phenomena, which can produce remarkable short-term increases in global temperatures, are just that: they are short-term blips that vanish after a couple of years. Al Gore leaves us with the impression that these two years are further evidence of man-made global warming when the reality is nothing more than they are in fact El Niño years.
Another way the average Joe can navigate this confusing terrain is to spend some time reading “The Neglected Sun.” It is not hard to read, the citations to peer-reviewed literature are numerous, and as it does give a place, albeit a secondary one, for CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, it gives a feeling of balance, and also an admission of the infancy of much of our knowledge, an admission that is entirely missing from popular presentations from the other side, in particular from Al Gore.
Spend some time reading the book and it will become clear that the claims of scientific consensus and that the science is settled are false. And it seems to me that when what we can test is found to be wanting, this gives us reason to be suspicious of that which we cannot test. In other words, it looks sneaky and it looks like they haven’t got the goods.
Now the authors make it clear that they are not denying that we need to move away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, but they are arguing that because projections based on solar activity are actually going to give us a few decades of cooling, we can make the change in a rational, rather than a panicked, way.
The stakes are high, as we are on the verge of decisions that can dramatically alter the prosperity of not only our children and grandchildren, but of those in developing countries that need at least short-term access to fossil fuels in order to keep from sliding further backwards in poverty.
Al Gore and the alarmists are right about one thing: the climate debate is a moral issue, but just not in the way they see it. Because if our authors are right, then we are faced with the following reality: as much of an economic inconvenience that an abrupt shift away from fossil fuels would be for those of us in the wealthy West, it is actually a life-and-death situation for those in the developing world whose ability to move out of poverty would be taken away from them.
And that is immoral.
December 15, 2013
This book’s explanation of the sun’s influence on climate provides an important alternative hypothesis for global warming. The authors show that climate change is more closely linked to solar output than to carbon dioxide levels and support this claim with hundred of studies. They demonstrate how patterns of solar radiation and magnetism account for centuries of heating and cooling. If you are concerned about this issue, but sense misinformation in the news coverage, this book may be of interest.
August 10, 2020
Great Insights and Explanations for Natural Climate Change
This book provides a huge and well argued insight into the typical natural variability of the earths climate system.
Covers not just the Sun cycles and fluctuations of heating, but also the temperature fluctuations due to ocean oscillations.
CO2 is not discarded as a warming contributor, but is thereby put into a more realistic perspective of its possible contribution in a much more complex chaotic system than the typical IPCC 1-dimensional view would have us believe.
Lots of references.
This book provides a huge and well argued insight into the typical natural variability of the earths climate system.
Covers not just the Sun cycles and fluctuations of heating, but also the temperature fluctuations due to ocean oscillations.
CO2 is not discarded as a warming contributor, but is thereby put into a more realistic perspective of its possible contribution in a much more complex chaotic system than the typical IPCC 1-dimensional view would have us believe.
Lots of references.
June 15, 2020
Warning: this book has been critically analysed elsewhere and other readers have raised questions about the expertise of its authors and the manner is which third party sources have been cited (for example the IPCC). If you are interested in climate science, human-forced climate change and technical aspects of solar radiation and greenhouse gasses, you should read this first:
https://skepticalscience.com/fritz-va...
https://skepticalscience.com/fritz-va...
January 26, 2014
This is a very good book, and does justice to the fact that we - or scientists - do not take the effect of the sun into their calculations when talking about climate change.
I have been surprised that Germany has so many solar power installations, considering that it has very little sunshine.
Yes, indeed, there does seem to be a case for taking the sun's effects into the calculations while estimating climate change, and if indeed the sun is going through a cooling phase, it may explain, in part, why there are such cold winters in certain parts of the world.
I am not sure about the 1,000 year cycles, as we cannot estimate the accuracy of measurements 1,000 years ago.
Also, I am a little wary of the rather strident tone in the book. This can seem colored, and I wonder if their own bias sometimes overshadows the effects of the other factors on climate change. The book uses a lot of data from Europe, and many parts of the world seem to be neglected in it's analysis. Does pollution in Asia affect the climate?
This is a good book, and it raises some very valid points.
I have been surprised that Germany has so many solar power installations, considering that it has very little sunshine.
Yes, indeed, there does seem to be a case for taking the sun's effects into the calculations while estimating climate change, and if indeed the sun is going through a cooling phase, it may explain, in part, why there are such cold winters in certain parts of the world.
I am not sure about the 1,000 year cycles, as we cannot estimate the accuracy of measurements 1,000 years ago.
Also, I am a little wary of the rather strident tone in the book. This can seem colored, and I wonder if their own bias sometimes overshadows the effects of the other factors on climate change. The book uses a lot of data from Europe, and many parts of the world seem to be neglected in it's analysis. Does pollution in Asia affect the climate?
This is a good book, and it raises some very valid points.
August 12, 2015
Oh, I liked this, especially Chapter 3 with all the solar and cosmic cycles described. The Nir Shaviv chapter is also to my liking, others too. It's worth noting that this book, I'm told, caused something of a sensation in Germany because one of the authors was a well known and highly regarded Warmist. The book spends a lot of time checking the IPCC, but for anyone who has been following closely the time spend doing that seems redundant. Given the time it was written though I can't really fault them for that.
October 26, 2015
Good summary and balanced approach
Very complex issue handled in what appears to be an objective manner and backed up with a ton of referenced scientific works. They give what appears to be a more rational number to the effect of CO2 on global warming and also the effect the sun through the variously described mechanisms. Excellent read. Pity more people on both sides don.t read this...
Very complex issue handled in what appears to be an objective manner and backed up with a ton of referenced scientific works. They give what appears to be a more rational number to the effect of CO2 on global warming and also the effect the sun through the variously described mechanisms. Excellent read. Pity more people on both sides don.t read this...
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