We see many articles like the following two that show more evidence of a solar control on climate even at the regional scale.

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We have written about the solar control on climate many times in the past, and to say the least, the debate continues to rage regarding the solar influence of Earth’s climate. IPCC has been luke warm on the subject, stating in the Technical Summary that “Solar irradiance contributions to global average radiative forcing are considerably smaller than the contribution of increases in greenhouse gases over the industrial period.” Two articles have appeared recently that provide even more evidence that variations in solar output have a profound impact on regional, hemispheric, and global climatic variations.

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One of the enduring pillars of the climate change issue is that the temperature of the Earth is increasing at an unprecedented rate … we’ve heard it a million times over the past few decades. However, it is well known that the temperature of the Earth has not increased over the past decade, and the lack of recent warming is now receiving serious consideration in the leading scientific journals. Two recent articles are of particular interest to us at World Climate Report.

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Nicola Scafetta is an atmospheric scientist with Duke University’s highly regarded Department of Physics, and in a recent article in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, he provides an excellent introduction for us stating “Estimating the solar contribution to global mean air surface temperature change is fundamental for evaluating the anthropogenic contribution to climate change. This is regarded as one of the most important issues of our time. While some theoretical climate model studies indicate that the solar variability has little effect on climate (these studies estimate that less than 10% of the global warming observed since 1900 is due to the sun), several empirical studies suggest that large climatic variations are well synchronized with solar variations and, therefore, climate is quite sensitive to solar changes.”

No doubt about it – a considerable debate rages in the climate community about the role of the sun in controlling the temperature of the earth. There are many leading climate scientists who believe that the sun’s impact is negligible while others believe the sun’s control on earth’s temperature is substantial. Both groups publish regularly, and there is no end of empirical and theoretical evidence to support both camps. If you think the debate is over in the world of climate change, look at the literature on solar control of climate, and you will immediately conclude the debate is as lively as ever.

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A couple of months back, there was a discussion taking place over at Joe Romm’s ClimateProgress blog concerning a report that the earth’s ability to take-up atmospheric carbon dioxide was declining. A declining CO2 sink, of course, meant that things climatological were going to be even worse than expected, because a growing proportion of anthropogenic CO2 emissions were going to remain in the atmosphere, thus pushing the rise of CO2 concentrations and the degree of climate change higher.

At the time, an alert reader pointed out to Joe Romm that there was in fact, no indication from data and observations that a larger percentage of human CO2 emissions were ending up in the atmosphere. In fact, the data showed that the fraction of CO2 emitted into the atmospheric by human activities has remained constant for the past 40 years.

This fact runs directly counter to the idea that the earth’s natural CO2 sinks are weakening—instead it indicates that natural sinks have been expanding as anthropogenic CO2 emissions have increased. After all, in order to keep the airborne fraction of CO2 emissions constant over time, increasing anthropogenic CO2 emissions must be countered by an increasing CO2 sink.

Joe Romm was a bit dismissive (to say the least) of this line of argument.

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One of the indisputable facts in the field of global climate change is that the atmospheric build-up of methane (CH4) has been, over the past few decades, occurring much more slowly than all predictions as to its behavior (Figure 1). Since methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas (thought to have about 25 times the warming power of CO2), emissions scenarios which fail to track methane will struggle to well-replicate the total climate forcing, likely erring on the high side—and feeding too much forcing into climate models leads to too much global warming coming out of them.

Figure 1. Atmospheric methane concentrations, 1985-2008, with the IPCC methane projections overlaid (adapted from: Dlugokencky et al., 2009)

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Over at MasterResource.org is an article looking at EPA’s Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Sections 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, and wonders whether or not the EPA has set its sight on the correct gas. The EPA’s focus seems to be on carbon dioxide, but a very strong case can be made that the net effect of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations may not be so bad (in fact, it may be quite good). So instead of risking the possibility that if they consider the climate impacts of CO2 alone they very well may not be able to build a case for an “endangerment to public health or welfare,” the EPA has lumped CO2 together with five other greenhouse gases thus watering down the positive aspects of CO2 with the potential negative ones from the other gases.

The MasterResource piece argues that to make a fair assessment of its effect on climate, CO2 should be unlumped and considered on its own.

Usually when we think of global warming, we are led to believe that it is caused primarily by increasing greenhouse gases. After all, that is what all the fuss is about in Washington DC these days. But is that entirely true?

After all there are lots of other things going on all the while. For instance, to what degree has the global temperature record in recent decades been influenced by the variability in aerosol emissions?

This question has been the subject of a series of articles in recent years by Martin Wild and colleagues which look at the impacts of (primarily sulfate) aerosols on the earth’s climate. They typically conclude that sulfate aerosols play a larger role in multi-decadal climate fluctuations than the climate models generally give them credit for. And that models’ inability to properly handle the climate aspects of aerosols “may hamper the predictive skills of these models to project near future climate evolution.”

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Recently we worked through the steps required to derive a handy-dandy way to convert carbon dioxide emissions savings to global temperature savings and suggested a few ways in which to apply it. Our primary objective was to put into everyone’s hands a quick-and-easy way for the common man to do what most climate-change-through-emissions-reductions advocates won’t do themselves (or, rather, don’t want you to know the result)—that is, put a climate face on their proposed actions.

The reason that they don’t do this themselves, is that despite all the global warming bluster, their proposed actions have virtually no direct impact on the course of future climate change.

Such is the case with the recently proposed national automobile fuel efficiency standards.

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There is a lot being made in some circles about how we are currently on an emissions pathway that exceeds even the worst case projections used by the IPCC. This is used to support pleadings that we take immediate and significant action to reduce our profligate usage of fossil fuels, or we risk making the planet inhospitable to human societies.

The problem is that it is unclear who “we” are. Since most of these pleadings seem to be aimed at the current U.S. Congress to get it to pass legislation to limit the lifestyle of those under its control, it would seem like “we” are Americans.

But it this really a very effective course of action? Are Americans the reason that the current pathway of total global carbon dioxide emissions exceeds the IPCC’s wildest expectations? Or is there a more appropriate target audience?

To help you decide for yourself, we plot below the annual (energy-based) carbon dioxide emissions from various portions of the world for the past 10 years (through 2006, the last data available from the Energy Information Administration).

Figure 1. Annual energy-related carbon dioxide emissions from various portions of the world, 1997-2006 (source: Energy Information Administration)

Notice that one of these things is not like the others. And that thing is…China.

The emissions growth in China over the past 10 years (actually over the past 6-7) is simply astounding. Since 2000, China has increased its CO2 emissions by nearly 50% more than the rest of the world combined. In fact, had China’s CO2 emission changes for the past 10 years paralleled those of the United States (which was responsible for only a few percent of the global emission growth since 2000), the world would be on an emissions pathway that would lie very near the lowest scenario considered by the IPCC.

If other words, “we” (Americans) have little responsibility for “our” (global) emissions growth during the past 5-10 years.

Here is another way to look at it.

China has increased its national emissions since 2000 by an amount equivalent to about half the total annual U.S. emissions. That means, just to offset Chinese emissions growth, each and every one of us (Americans) would have had, on average, to have reduced our CO2 emissions by 50% during the same period. And this would only to be to offset China’s growth! Give China a few more years (although the global recession will slow things down a bit—temporarily) and China’s emissions growth will have exhausted our (Americans) potential to effect any more offsets—in other words, even it we (Americans) in 2000 had eliminated all our CO2 emissions, China, by the end of this decade, would most likely have completely replaced them through growth of its own. In only 10 short years, our (Americans) tremendous sacrifice would be forever erased by China’s growth.

The bottom line is clearly thus:

The loudest the pleas to limit carbon dioxide emissions should be being made in Chinese (rather than English), for without reigning in China’s emissions growth, America’s impact on future global climate change will be minuscule. So the alarmists should quit pestering us (Americans) about our energy usage until they have made some serious inroads with China. Recent trends show that “we” are not the problem.