National Geographic Rains on the Global Warming Parade

... though snows would be the more accurate verb. Ha! (Additional silly jokes supplied upon request.)

The sun is the least active it's been in decades and the dimmest in a hundred years. The lull is causing some scientists to recall the Little Ice Age, an unusual cold spell in Europe and North America, which lasted from about 1300 to 1850.

The coldest period of the Little Ice Age, between 1645 and 1715, has been linked to a deep dip in solar storms known as the Maunder Minimum.

During that time, access to Greenland was largely cut off by ice, and canals in Holland routinely froze solid. Glaciers in the Alps engulfed whole villages, and sea ice increased so much that no open water flowed around Iceland in the year 1695.

Of course, N.G. solicits the other side of the argument. (Would that more publishers of global warming articles did so.) To start with, an AGW devote accuses skeptics of infringing on the specialty of AGW advocates.

"[Global warming] skeptics tend to leap forward," said Mike Lockwood, a solar terrestrial physicist at the University of Southampton in the U.K.

Hey, no problem. We'll stop looking forward if you do.

Lockwood then goes on, remarkably, to make the case that the measly 6% of greenhouse gases generated by man (the other 94% being supplied by Mother Nature) has a greater influence on Earth's climate than the Sun.

I think you have to bear in mind that the CO2 is a good 50 to 60 percent higher than normal, whereas the decline in solar output is a few hundredths of one percent down. ... I think that helps keep it in perspective.

Perspective? Try this for perspective. The sun sends 29.4 Megajoules of radiation to every square meter of the Earth's surface every day. (No, I have no idea what a Megajoule equates to. It just sounds impressive because it has the word "mega" in it.) Now, how many Megajoules does man's CO2 equate to? Again, I have no idea. But it isn't in the realm of what the sun sends us.

Still not convinced? I don't blame you, after that bit of incomplete science. Let's compare the impact of man's carbon versus the impact of the sun another way. If man altogether ceased generating carbon, what would the effect be on our climate? on the planet overall? Well, we know the answer to that. Or at least, AGW advocates claim to know. They say it is man's carbon that has warmed the Earth one one hundredth of a degree a year for the last 120 years. This is the global warming part of the theory of anthropogenic global warming. So, using this measure, the worst thing that would happen if man stopped generating carbon is that the planet would be one one hundredth of a degree cooler every year.

Now, what would happen to our climate - to the Earth - if the sun altogether ceased burning?

Thank you, Your Honor. No further questions.