Gee, that's funny Poirot. If the sun has little bearing on the Earth's temperature, how do you account for the fact that the Earth's temperature has swung wildly from hotter to colder throughout it's 4.56 billion year history before humans were around to pump their insignificant contribution of CO2 into the atmosphere? 90% of atmospheric CO2 comes from volcanic outgassing.

Could I remind you that the reason why life exists on Earth is because earth inhabits the "goldilock's zone" around the sun where a planet orbiting it's star is not too close to be too hot and not too far to be too cold for liquid water to exist on the surface.

The little quote that you cut and pasted from your link, and which you hold up as same sort of proof positive that your position is correct, does not address that little fact at all. It simply says that the sun is not a big factor in Earth's climate, when quite obviously it is a major factor. The sun's output varies (although generally, it is getting hotter) and that is far more likely to have immediate effects on Earth's climate then anything the human race can do.

Astronomers who are watching the sun at the moment are concerned that the sun has not undergone the normal changes associated with it's Maunder Minimum. They are worried that the sun may be undergoing a cooling period.

There are two different subjects that as usual are being spun into debate about climate change and scepticism, not direct debate about CO2.

There is scepticism about CO2 causing AGW.
There is less scepticism that climate change occurring.

I think it correct to say a majority of people think human activity is affecting climate but that the cause is not CO2.

Surely sensible debate should be about warming due CO2 or not.

Plus, debate should be allowed as to whether or not other possible causes of warming exist in some regions, or globally.

How about some real science, instead of junk science to rake in money from trading schemes.

Poirot; in your own words explain what Sloan and Wolfendale are doing in their latest Letter, NOT paper; a Letter is not peer reviewed.

While we all wait eagerly for your synopsis a bit of history. S&W are specialists in the Cosmic Ray dispute. The CR dispute is about whether CR from cosmic solar sources other than the sun [although the sun also emits CRs] can vitiate the effect of the sun on the planet's weather mainly through the formation of clouds.

S&W wrote a 2008 paper opposing this idea which in turn was critiqued by Shaviv, one of the world's leading CR and solar specialists; see here for a discussion:

http://motls.blogspot.com.au/2008/04/sun-climate-link-reply-to-sloan-and.html

The theory of CRs influencing climate really gained momentum with the work of Eigil Friis-Christensen and Knud Lassen, and subsequently Henrik Svensmark in the 1990s although the idea had been around since the 1970s.

The theory and opposition to it is discussed in this Wall Street Journal article:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424053111904900904576554063768827104

The author explains, with a bit of flourish, that CR theory is based on

"charged subatomic particles from outer space, or "cosmic rays," whose atmospheric levels appear to rise and fall with the weakness or strength of solar winds that deflect them from the earth. These shifts might significantly impact the type and quantity of clouds covering the earth, providing a clue to one of the least-understood but most important questions about climate. Heavenly bodies might be driving long-term weather trends."

As you can see this contradicts AGW theory.

The point of all this Poirot, is that S&W's latest paper is about CRs not solar activity which is a completely different thing.

Nothing about S&W contradicts Stockwell's paper which is NOT about CRs. But thanks for coming Poirot.

I always find it odd the way that many of cohenite’s links turn out to be articles written by a certain Mr Anthony Cox. Mr Cox is a lawyer and secretary to the No Climate Tax Climate Sceptics Party with no expertise in climate science. Even more remarkably, cohenite often fails to carefully read what Mr Cox has written and gets it wrong. But even then, going and having a look at what Mr Cox has written it becomes clear that he is not interested in what the science has to offer and frequently follows the line and uses graphs from blogs by other non-experts, such as Jo Nova, Anthony Watts, Ken Stewart, Werner Brozek and so on.

Taking the latest blog post cohenite linked to of Mr Cox and David Stockwell as an example, we have the claim that “The IPCC is a farce and has no scientific validity as the 2010 IAC enquiry found”

But is this the case? Well you can read the IAC review at http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/report.html

What did the IAC actually say about the IPCC process?

“The Committee found that the IPCC assessment process has been successful overall.”

That doesn't sound at all like the IAC finding the IPCC process having no scientific validity.

It then goes on to make recommendations around tightening up management and governance at the IPCC to address issues that have arisen outside the IPCC.

So why, if their claims that the IAC found the IPCC had no validity are correct did cohenite or Mr Cox not link directly to the report to show that? What is it in the IAC report about the IPCC that they were trying to hide?

On a flexi-day are you Agro? Nice cherry-picking; that would be the only favourable comment made about the IPCC from the report.

Well let's have a look at what the IAC report really said. They provided “A simple typology of uncertainties”; obviously because they thought the IPCC did not know what uncertainty meant.

The IAC provided a stats 101 primer for the different types of "uncertainty". For instance for “Unpredictability”, they list, “Projections of human behaviour not easily amenable to prediction (e.g. evolution of political systems). Chaotic components of complex systems.”

For examples of “Structural uncertainty”, they say, “Inadequate models, incomplete or competing conceptual frameworks, lack of agreement on model structure, ambiguous system boundaries or definitions, significant processes or relationships wrongly specified or not considered.”

For “Value uncertainty: Missing, inaccurate or non-representative data, inappropriate spatial or temporal resolution, poorly known or changing model parameters.”

The IAC knew that the IPCC reports were dismal. Statistician William Briggs notes:

"they reminded the IPCC that “probabilistic approaches are available” and that they should consider reporting “ranges of outcomes and their associated likelihoods”. To make this complete, there’s a sarcastic lesson on rhetoric: “A 10% chance of dying is interpreted more negatively than a 90% chance of surviving.”

Folks, this is elementary! But school wasn’t over. There’s a hilarious table in which various wordings of uncertainties are mapped to numerical measures, e.g. “Very low confidence” maps to “Less than 1 out of 10 chance.” This is so basic it is like reminding a physicist that the speed of light is constant. IPCC members must be furious to be spoken to in this manner!"

Are you an IPCC member Agro?

The IAC concluded with this aside:

"[The IPCC should] be aware of a tendency for a group to converge on an expressed view and become overconfident in it”.

And you think the IAC report was favourable to the IPCC Agro? What would I or anyone else have to hide with conclusions like that?

LEGO,

"Gee, that's funny Poirot. If the sun has little bearing on the Earth's temperature...."

Nice try...although we're discussing the increase in temperature since industrialisation correlating with the rapid rise in CO2.

""Although it is generally believed that the increase in the mean global surface temperature since industrialization...."

Cohenite,

You have little scientific credibility and your link sources are often laughable.

Agronomist nailed it.