[Vision2020] Scientist Benestad Confronts Skeptic S. Fred Singer On Solar Forcing At European Geophysical Union Assembly

[Ted Moffett]

If only a confrontation like this would come to blows... Then the public
might pay more attention.  Male machismo is much more convincing and
interesting to many than calm factual reasoned arguments.  The climate
science community could sponsor boxing matches between opposing scientists.
"Might makes right" (or rather money buying media influence, an economic
form of "might") often in the real world, in terms of who believes what,
does it not?  I'm not serious, unless, well, the scientists who do the best
professional work win the boxing matches... No doubt this would have an
effect on public opinion, I am sad to say.
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Climate Scientist Benestad's Bio and Publications:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=50

http://home.broadpark.no/~rbene/ras-publ.html
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http://www.realclimate.org

*Latest skeptical song from Singer*

This week, the annual European Geophysical
Union<http://www.egu.eu/home.html>(EGU)'s general
assembly <http://www.egu.eu/news/news/article/10/general-asse.html> was held
in Vienna. Friday afternoon, I went to one of the conference's last talks to
learn about the latest news from the climate skeptics (have to keep an open
mind…). It was probably the talk with the smallest audience in the whole
conference (see the photo, but note there were a couple of individuals who
were not captured by camera), despite an unusually long slot (30 min)
allocation.

And not much news, I'm afraid, apart from that SEPP plans to release it's
NIPCC<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/not-the-ipcc-nipcc-report/>'09
in May. I understand it will be a thick report (800 pages?). The main
messages were (a) that GHGs were unimportant - allegedly supported by Douglass
et al. (2007)<http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/117857349/abstract>,
and (b) solar activity was the main reason for the recent global warming and
the mechanism involved galactic cosmic rays
(GCR)<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/10/cosmic-rays-don%e2%80%99t-die-so-easily/>.


I asked Singer how he could explain the most recent warming when there is no
trend<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/recent-warming-but-no-trend-in-galactic-cosmic-rays/>in
the GCR-flux or other indices of solar activity since 1952. He
countered
by saying he was glad I asked him this question, and announced that he had
done his thesis exactly on the topic solar wind and GCRs.

So I had to answer that I had written a book about solar activity and
climate, and I repeated my question. He could not answer in the end - other
than saying that we have to look at the data. I told him that we already
have looked at the data (e.g. Richardsson et al
2002<http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2001JA000507.shtml>;
Benestad, 2005 <http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005GL023621.shtml>;
Lockwood
& Frohlich, 2007<http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf>),
so I recommended him to read up on RC.

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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