An elastic definition of "half"? 

Isn't it lovely to have official science on your side?  The National Academy of Science and the National Research Council have released a short pro-Warmist video which purports to show that changes in the sun could not have caused the slight global warming of the late 20th century





The video is clearly designed to impress people who know nothing about the subject.  It is meant to represent "The Science" that Warmists are always talking about.  The video is however crooked from the start.  A correlation between solar activity and terrestrial temperature has been known for around 200 years.  So that is discussed?  Not on your nellie!  It is ignored.  And of course Svensmark's explanation for that correlation (recently confirmed at CERN) is not mentioned either.  So both the facts and the  theory  most relevant to the question they address are ignored!  A virtuoso performance of fraud!

But what of the things they do mention?  If you watch the video, starting at  mark 0:57 to 1:16 minutes you hear them say:

"Before satellites, solar energy had to be estimated by more indirect methods such as records of the number of sunspots observed each year, which is an indicator of solar activity. These indirect methods suggest that there was a slight increase in solar energy during the first half of the 20th century and a decrease in the latter half."

So let us look at the numbers in the sunpot record  Here.   Note that the biggest cycle is solar cycle 19 which started in April 1954.  That's the SECOND half of the century, not the First like they say.  But more important than that, is if you add up the sunspot numbers (found in column 5 of the chart) you will see that there were many more sunspots in the SECOND half of the 20th century than the first.

It's true that sunspot numbers in cycles (such as cycle 19) aren’t the same as solar energy received by the earth but it is sunspot numbers that the video hangs its hat on so there is no doubt about the deception.

So how come official bodies can  perpetrate such a careless fraud?  The only way I can make the numbers come out anywhere near what they say is to put the big leap of 1954 into the first half of the century.  Strange arithmetic!  It certainly gives the impression that they themselves do not believe what they say.  They are just going through the motions in a very careless way:  Just putting out pretty but worthless beads to wave in the faces of  the despised "masses".


Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).