The last refuge of the climate sceptics is the claim that global warming is nothing to do with us: it’s the sun wot did it (to paraphrase a British tabloid). The claim has never held much water, but the final hole in the sceptics favourite bucket is a new paper examining claims of a solar driver for recent climate change. The BBC reports:
A new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun’s output cannot be causing modern-day climate change. It shows that for the last 20 years, the Sun’s output has declined, yet temperatures on Earth have risen. It also shows that modern temperatures are not determined by the Sun’s effect on cosmic rays, as has been claimed.
The paper by Mike Lockwood from the UK’s Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory and Claus Froehlich from the World Radiation Center in Switzerland in the Royal Society’s journal Proceedings A, should put the “solar debate
