#230 Allan, you have expressed a much more elegant way of summarizing what I was trying to say. In effect, they are modelling the earth as a planet that doesn’t rotate, with the sun being 1/4 of it’s actual strength. Their wishful thinking is that the sun is a constant.

#229 Steve Molesworthy: Given the political climate surrounding GW, I think the burden is on anyone whose methods fail to find a solar signal to clearly explain where it went, as a statistical issue, not a modeling issue. L&F had to know how AGW adherents would respond to a paper such as theirs. To believers absence of proof is proof of absence.

“Are models underestimating the effect of solar forcing on climate?”
Crooks et al EGU 2003

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003EAEJA….14600C

Yes, you are absolutely correct, since it’s common sense. When the sun rises, the day warms up, invalidating the L&F assertion that the atmosphere doesn’t repond to changes in TSI.

First of all, the paper clearly shows incorrect temperature data. I have plotted the global temperature from satellite data (yes, the oceans are part of the world as well), and the graph does not steadily go up, like Lockwood deceptively shows. In fact, Lockwood has eliminated the 1998 peak. In 1998, it was .8, while June 2007 stands at .22. That’s a .6 deg drop that Lockwood has eliminated. The correct data: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt

The Earth’s surface air temperature (figure 1e) does not respond to the solar cycle. Even a large amplitude modulation would be heavily damped in the global mean temperature record by the long thermal time constants associated with parts of the climate system, in particular the oceans

Contrary to the article in the UK rag, where Lockwood was quoted as saying there was no time lag, he writes here that the time lag is so large, that the “temperature does not respond to the solar cycle”. This contradicts direct observation.

He uses the words of control theory, but does not seem to understand the concepts. He seems to think that “dampening” is equivalent to “smoothing”. Physical systems are not doing computer smoothing. As such, a damped system is certainly still “responding”. No energy is lost. The worst part is the obvious argument switch (in bold). He starts out by referring to the atmosphere, then switches to oceans. Oceans have a much larger time lag than the atmosphere. The fact that the atmosphere does respond to solar variation is confirmed by the increase in temperature from night to day. If there were an atmospheric time lag that prevented the atmosphere from responding to the solar cycle delta of perhaps 10 W/m2 (solar irradiance + positive feedback effects), then it would also prevent the day from heating up.

Lockwood’s assertion about solar activity falling off since 1985 is disproved by direct evidence:

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/IRRADIANCE/irrad.html

The solar data in the paper looks right, but that directly disproves the conclusion that solar activity has declined since 1985. The reality is that it continues to exhibit an 11 year cycle, with 1986 being a minimum, not a maximum.

The crux of what you’re looking for though is the source of his error: They incorrectly use statistical adjustment.

With physical systems, it is incorrect to average daily, yearly or 11 year cycles and consider that to be the input to the system. Consider this charred roast analogy:

Wife: Honey, the roast is charred black, did you cook it at 350 for one hour?
AGW husband: Why, yes, the temperature did AVERAGE 350 for one hour. For 10 minutes, it was at 1500, so I compensated by setting it to 120 for 50 minutes. That’s the same, right?

Well, no! My daily exposure to the sun, averaged over the whole day is very low, and yet I will get a sunburn. Real systems react to current input values, as time goes by. Amazingly, L&F average a solar cycle, and conclude it has no effect. If this were true, it should not get so hot in the summer, since a few months from now, it will be winter, and the input should be considered to be the average of winter and summer.

#224, whch post are you responding to?

Huh ?
I admit that I didn’t read all of the paper but the pages 80-85 are perfectly correct to the point of banality .
Where did you see that Maxwell’s equations “disprove the existence of microwave oven” ?
I had to read the page 85 twice to conclude that you came to this hallucinating statement by completely misunderstanding the words “One is left with the possibility to include a hypothetical warming by radiation by hand in terms of artificial heat densities .”
In any case you confuse infrared photon absorption with an oscillation of an eletrical dipole in an electromagnetical field what is quite impressive .
In such case ignorance is an understatement .

Maybe you or someone could ask Archer for his code. It seems to produce results quickly, so maybe it’s not too elaborate.