There is plenty of evidence for two sides to the issue of AGW can you at least admit there are two sides RickG, Rambot and Thaumaturgy.
Firstly: Yes there can be two sides to any debate in science. That does not mean that both sides have equal support for their hypothesis.
There are people out there today who question plate tectonics. They are not in any way a threat to the reality of plate tectonics.
Secondly: No one disagrees that the sun is a "forcing" in climate. You read that explicitly in the literature of the majority who believe in agw. The question then becomes:
is it an explanatory variable for the bulk of the current warming we see over the past 50 or so years?
This is what science does: it looks at
multiple factors in an analysis.
For instance: in my job I often am presented with data that measures a wide variety of aspects of a given item and the tries to correlate them to a given output variable.
Then my job is to work the
multivariate analyses to see which "factor" affects the given output variable.
Not all factors are equal.
Let's say, as an example, I'm looking to see how factors X, Y and Z impact the result, A.
I run a statistical model on the factors X, Y and Z (in my case I may be able to control X, Y and Z in the lab, but I could just as easily run the model with X, Y, and Z without direct control in the lab using proper statistics) and I find that the "equation" that explains the relationship looks like this:
A = 3X + 1Y + 0.00003Z
So if you give me the values of X, Y and Z they will be multiplied by those coefficients.
What if I change Z? Will it make a big impact on the result of A? Which factor, X or Y, will have the biggest impact on A?
This is a simplified example and glosses over a lot (I'm not a statistician, nor am I a climatologist), but the point being that
Z can still be a statistically significant factor and should be included in the model, but the analyses should show if Z is as important as X or Y.
And that is why, on the broader scope, when you look at the climate debate it is important to note that the best estimates right now put anthropogenic factors as explanatory variables.
Now let's look at the "natural vs anthropogenic" factors in explaining the temperature rise over
Now what I see (and what most people see) is that natural forcings
alonedo not explain the more recent temperature rise. The
best explanation takes into account
both anthropogenic and natural forcings.
Let's move onto "cosmoclimatology" of Svensmark. Well, clear GCR's have been shown to be a real possible factor on some aspects of cloud formation by the CERN experiments.
But the CERN experiments were NOT intended to show if they impact global warming. That aside, so far the hypothesis is very new and when people have, in the past, attempted to find a correlation between global climate and GCR the correlations have some serious "breakdowns" such as this from
Laut, 2003:
It's not going to be easy to use the GCR's as an explanatory variable for the cloud anomalies after 1991.
This is not to say that GCR's have "zero" effect. They may have a small effect or maybe somewhat larger. The jury is still out. This is why many skeptics really
cling to Svensmark. It's a bigger "unknown", but it's going to have to turn out to be a really BIG factor.
And it's going to have to somehow "swamp" anthropogenic factors.
Oh yeah, and it will take years maybe even decades to parse out the impact of the factor and establish it as a major one.
But what if "the clock is ticking" and we need to make decisions VERY SOON on what to do about our climate impact?
Well we could "gamble" and go with the nearly completely "unknown" factors and hope our "salvation" lies in those....
or
We could make informed decisions based on nearly 100 years of pretty solid science.
You a gambler? If so, can we ask you to do it with someone else's planet?
