A commenter ('thingodonta') on another online forum has written an interesting essay about delayed global temperature increases cause by sun activity in the first half of the twentieth century. The essay is in reply to an article by someone else. It makes sense to me. Sorry I couldn't do a link so have posted the entire thing.
"I think your article is very important, and hits the nail on the head on the very large and inconvenient error that I think forms the entire basis and argument for strong AGW from C02. Let me explain.
In the 1990s scientists were increasingly noticing that the earth had been warming since the 1970s (and longer than that as well) , but at the time there was no apparent natural reason for this to be occurring. When they looked at the sun, it wasn’t changing, so presumably, the only way to explain it was from human-derived greenhouse gas concentrations, which had been steadily increasing at much the same time. It was a very convenient explanation, as it opened up huge career options, as well as the backing of the entire green movement, that the whole world’s ways were was causing trouble to the climate, and entire research lifetimes could now be spent finding ways to alleviate the problem and change the world. You could get an entirely new career just studying the problem. It was also very politicially tempting to jump to the conclusion that is was all human c02, the entire green movement and most of the left would be behind you. Academic careers beckoned. You could save the world.
So many scientists decided that the only explanation for late 20th century warming was from greenhouse gases from human activities. They made up their mind, without properly considering alternatives, because it was just too politically tempting. The idea of multi-decadal heat lags from solar activity was not even known about, and too vague and unlikely to take seriously.
Trouble is, the scientists and agencies which were then formed to ‘look into’ the problem decided they already knew what they were talking about, and dug their heels in. The temperature was rising from c02 and other human activities, and that was that. Trouble is, if this was true, and this is what they genuinely expected, the temperature should have continued to rise after the 1990s. But it hasn’t. And now they have a problem, they can’t turn around and say they jumped to conclusions in the first place in the 1990s and go it wrong, because this would be a serious loss of face. All those media statements, papers, careers, warnings, all horribly and embarrasingly wrong. Too much is now invested, too many have been caught up with the moment, and it’s too late to backtrack and change your mind.
They should have never jumped to the very convenient academic conclusion that society had to be saved by academia. They should have said that they don’t know. They should not have jumped to hasty conclusions, and should had better examined other possibilities. They should not have dug their heels in and formed a house of cards ‘consensus’. They were irresponsible, and it’s going to come and back and haunt them.
When I first looked into the argument for AGW, within a few weeks I thought that multi-decadal heat lags from the high solar activity in the early 20th century could have caused late 20th century warming, couple with ocean changes and cycles, and I am an amateur. I looked into the consensus argument and their papers, and found that the consensus consistently ignored this possibility, only ever stating that late 20th century warming couldn’t be caused by the sun because solar activity had not increased during this time. It is a bad argument, because if that was true there would be no delay in the maximum summer temperatures weeks after the summer solstice, and even every single day after noon. Surely they had something else besides this, but actually they didn’t. All you had to do was to extend the idea of a heat lag out to longer times decadal time periods for solar activity, and late 20th century warming could be a possible explanation. You didnt need PHds and lifetime of research to understand it, but perhaps a lifetime of research had so cluttered one’s mind with false ideas and arguments that they no longer even thought of it. If I, as an amateur, could see things that people with PHds and years of experience couldn’t see, then what else were they missing?
It’s now very inconvenient for academics, to use Al Gore’s phrase, that the world has not been warming since the late 20th century. It undermines their entire argument. When they realise that the sun had a lot to do with late 20th century warming in the first place, when one realises that multi-decadal heat lag effects from solar activity could explain the warming of the late 20th century, the whole house of cards is going to gradually unravel. Late 20th century warming by c02 is the entire basis of their argument for catastrophic warming in the future and for strong AGW, that was what got them involved in the first place; if it was from the sun the entire basis of their argument and reason for their existance comes into serious question.
It’s not the first time ‘academia’ has been grossly irresponsible. The early 20th century saw social darwinism and eugenics, not to mention the re-ordering of society through ill conceived ‘communism’, which was in many places and times a widely respected and acceptable field of study. (Richard Piper, an expert of communism in the 20th century, blames communism’s development and success largely on irresponsible ‘radical intellectuals’. Sound familiar? It isn’t a left or right thing, its simply intellectuals of the right and the left being self serving and all high and mighty). But we can make such erroneous exaggerations and mistakes less likely to occur in the future, if we tighten up their own academic standards and accountablility, and let the self-correcting processes of science work themselves out in due course."
