Brrrrrrrrrr! It has sure been cold! The global warming skeptics have been claiming that global warming stopped in 1998. These same keptics also claim that whatever global warming we have been experiencing is due to solar cycles. However, the skeptic argument to the effect that global warming ended in 1998 disregards their own theory that the sun is the cause of climate change.
The fatal flaw of the “global warming stopped in 1998″ is that the sun has not gone through a complete sunspot cycle since 1998. I would argue that as long as the sun could be considered to be a candidate for the title of the driver of climate change, weather which happens during a partial sunspot cycle is not climate change but, well, weather. So, what has been happening with the sunspots. During 2008, we were in, and we may still be in a period of the least amount of sunspot activity in over a century. The previous sunspot minimum was not 1998, but 1996. Even though 1998 was not a sunspot maximum, (that year was 2001) it was hardly the very low period of sunspot activity that 2008 was.
It should also be noted that 1998 was a year of a very strong El Nino. 2008 was not only a year of very low sunspot activity, but it was also a year of a very strong La Nina. However, in spit of this, 2008 was one of the ten warmest years in history. If it were not for man made greenhouse gases, 2008 would have been one of the coldest years in history. Indeed, if global warming were caused by solar activity alone, global warming would have ended in 1957, which was the year with the most sunspots in history.
This post was authored by James P. Yushchyshyn, a part-time science student at The King’s University College in Edmonton, AB.
http://kingsgreenpad.ca/?p=830
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