Is the Sun responsible for 25-35% of recent warming, as claimed by Scafetta & West ?

Question

Tomcat has recently been citing this study by Scafetta & West which concluded that the Sun may be responsible for as much as 25-35% of the warming from 1980-2000, so I thought it would be worth discussing. Here's the paper:

http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/2005GL025539.pdf

Here is Real Climate's take:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/03/solar-variability-statistics-vs-physics-2nd-round/

"S&W do not present any convincing result that would point to noticeably higher sensitivities to long-term variations. Their higher values are based on unrealistic assumptions. If they would use a more realistic climate transfer sensitivity of 0.11K/Wm-2, or even somewhat higher (0.12 or 0.13) for the long-term, and use trends instead of smooth curve points, they would end up with solar contributions of 10% or less for 1950-2000 and near 0% and about 10% in 1980-2000 using the PMOD and ACRIM data, respectively."

Any thoughts on this?

No actually Liberal, Real Climate = real climate scientists.

But I'm aware of your disdain for science, so your dismissal of a scientific discussion does not surprise me.

Answer 1

Can't be right.

Climatologists know all about changes in the Sun, which are measured by many independent people. Solar radiation has actually been decreasing a bit lately. Proof:

"Recent oppositely directed trends in solar
climate forcings and the global mean surface
air temperature", Lockwood and Frolich (2007), Proc. R. Soc. A
doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.1880

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf

News article at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6290228.stm

The bottom line (not from the "liberal" media):

"While evidence suggests fluctuations in solar activity can affect climate on Earth, and that it has done so in the past, the majority of climate scientists and astrophysicists agree that the sun is not to blame for the current and historically sudden uptick in global temperatures on Earth, which seems to be mostly a mess created by our own species."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,258342,00.html

Answer 2

Dana, It does not look like anyone here has the experience or the intellectual capacity to discuss spectral decomposition and it's benefit for analyzing time series. But your suggestion that PMOD and ACRIM would lead to the same contribution to climate forcing for the period of 1980 - 2000 is surprising.

Answer 3

I will give a example we have day and night.
In the olden days we work only at day time then comes light in the night so it means we started working at night to, human had break the rules of the night and night also become day.

Answer 4

They just keep coming up with excuses, to keep from doing what needs to be done.

Answer 5

No it is not. Solar activity is actually currently quiter than it has been in past years.