Sorry. I guess I'm just a sucker for facts and charts and science. Sorry, but it's a fact that the sun's output has been declining for around fifty years and there is no good science that shows the other planets are warming. That's just more of that tabloid science. But I'm glad you got a chuckle.
Maybe you didn't see this one. (yeah right) This gives a better perspective. Note the peak in the late 50's and the general decline from there.
This chart is representative of an enormous amount of data presented on this website. <img src=http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS%20Essay/Ocean_Heat_Content.jpg> http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS Essay/Climate_Change_Science.html
And another. <img src=http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS%20Essay/Beck%20CO2.gif> Between 1857 and 1958, the Pettenkofer process was the standard analytical method for determining atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and usually achieved accuracy better than 3%. These determinations were made by several scientists of Nobel Prize level distinction. Following Callendar (1938), modern climatologists have generally ignored the historic determinations of CO2, despite the techniques being standard textbook procedures in several different disciplines. Chemical methods were discredited as unreliable choosing only few which fit the assumption of a climate CO2 connection. Ernst-Georg Beck calls the falsification of the CO2 record "The greatest scandal in the modern history of science".
Warnings of Global Cooling Nigel Weiss, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge says that throughout earth's history climate change has been driven by factors other than man: "Variable behaviour of the sun is an obvious explanation," says Dr. Weiss, "and there is increasing evidence that Earth's climate responds to changing patterns of solar magnetic activity." The sun's most obvious magnetic features are sunspots, formed as magnetic fields rip through the sun's surface. "If you look back into the sun's past, you find that we live in a period of abnormally high solar activity," Dr. Weiss states. These hyperactive periods do not last long, "perhaps 50 to 100 years, then you get a crash," says Dr. Weiss. 'It's a boom-bust system, and I would expect a crash soon." In addition to the 11-year cycle, sunspots almost entirely "crash," or die out, every 200 years or so as solar activity diminishes. When the crash occurs, the Earth can cool dramatically. These phenomenon, known as "Grand minima," have recurred over the past 10,000 years, if not longer. In the 17th century, sunspots almost completely disappeared for 70 years. That was the coldest interval of the Little Ice Age, when New York Harbour froze, allowing walkers to journey from Manhattan to Staten Island, and when Viking colonies abandoned Greenland, a once verdant land that became tundra. In contrast, when the sun is very active, such as the period we're now in, the Earth can warm dramatically. This was the case during the Medieval Warm Period, when the Vikings first colonized Greenland and when Britain was wine-growing country. No one knows precisely when a crash will occur but some expect it soon, because the sun's polar field is now at its weakest since measurements began in the early 1950s. Some predict the crash within five years, and many speculate about its effect on global warming. Several authorities are now warning of global cooling because the sun has entered a quiet period. A Russian Academy of Sciences report in August 2006 warns that global cooling could develop on Earth in 50 years and have serious consequences. David Archibal presentation titled "The Past and Future of Climate" here presented to the Lavoisier Group's 2007 Workshop in Melbourne, Australia, shows a forecast of global temperatures based on a detailed analysis of sunspot cycles. He expects the next sunspot cycle (24) to be weak resulting in the start of a long cooling trend. The forecast shows a 1.5 oC drop in global temperature from 2007 to 2025. He warns "...this will have a large and negative effect on Canadian grain production...". On July 1, 2008, the Space and Science Research Center, a solar research organization, issued a formal declaration on climate change: Global warming has ended - a new climate era of pronounced cold weather has begun. http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS Essay/Climate_Change_Science.html
once again your quote in context... now what do you think is the fact and what do you think is the speculation? A 2012 study by Shakun et al. looked at temperature changes 20,000 years ago (the last glacial-interglacial transition) from around the world and added more detail to our understanding of the CO2-temperature change relationship. They found that: The Earth's orbital cycles trigger the initial warming (starting approximately 19,000 years ago), which is first reflected in the the Arctic. This Arctic warming caused large amounts of ice to melt, causing large amounts of fresh water to flood into the oceans. This influx of fresh water then disrupted the Atlantic Ocean circulation, in turn causing a seesawing of heat between the hemispheres. The Southern Hemisphere and its oceans warmed first, starting about 18,000 years ago. The warming Southern Ocean then released CO2 into the atmosphere starting around 17,500 years ago, which in turn caused the entire planet to warm via the increased greenhouse effect. Overall, about 90% of the global warming occurred after the CO2 increase (Figure 2). and here is the graph showing you
this paper explains why shakuns conjecture about CO2 leading is not warranted. http://www.sciencebits.com/Shakun_in_Nature However, the fact that the northern hemisphere temperature lags the CO2 does not imply that the NH is actually affected by the CO2. Compare the following: I. Southern Hemisphere T -> CO2 -> NH Temperature with II.Southern Hemisphere T -> CO2 with one lag, Southern Hemisphere T -> Northern Hemisphere T with a larger lag (say, through global ocean currents). How can you differentiate between the two options? You can't! This means that the above result means nothing in particular, except as mentioned before, that CO2 is probably affected by temperature, in particular, that of the southern hemisphere. In defense of the authors, I must say that when they have written in the abstract "an explanation" and not "the explanation" (see quote above), they were accurately portraying the indecisiveness of their results... Second point: Global temperature? Given the fact that the global temperature is composed of the SH and NH and that one precedes and the other lags the CO2, is there any meaning to averaging the two? Perhaps not if the physical behavior is different (at least for the particular temporal window studied in their paper). Even so, one would imagine that such an average for the global temperature should be half of the NH and half of the SH. This is because, at least last that I checked, exactly half of the Earth's surface area is in the Northern hemisphere and half is in the southern hemisphere (unlike comparison of the land area, or the temperature proxy data in the Shakun et al. paper).