I’d like to draw attention to the disturbingly poor logic displayed by Denis Dutton (a professor of philosophy!?), with his comment that Al Gore would look stupid if a drop in solar activity caused the earth to cool over the next 30 years.

Postulating what may make the world cooler in future decades has nothing to do with what has been making it warmer in the past. Well it could but in this case it doesn’t, because the Russian scientist he is referring to is describing a “200 year” cycle which would suggest the solar input has been waning for the past 60 years.

None of this changes what the carbon impact is, so even if they are correct, or we get some good volcanic activity to cool us down for a while then we should be even more concerned about what happens when the CO2 bites back a few years or decades later.