Is the Sun Responsible for Recent Warming?
In a previous post , I pointed out that I find the notion of quantifying "consensus" to have limited value, but one value I admit it can have is to show areas of climate science about which practicing scientists no longer in actively debate in the literature. This allows us to understand what debates in popular discourse do not translate into debate among climate scientists. One of the most common objections to AGW I hear in popular circles is that warming is caused by the Sun, rather than human activity. The most common way I see this claim is with reference to solar variability in terms of total solar irradiance (TSI). Variability in TSI can be caused by two things: changes in solar output, like the 11-year solar cycle, or changes in the distance between the earth and the Sun. Variability in the Earth's orbit around the Sun, often referred to as orbital cycles, do not change the total amount of energy the Earth receives in a year, but they can change the distribution of...