The hockey-stick folks aren't going to like this: Apparently some other scientists have a rival hypothesis about why the Earth's climate has warmed. Their explanation: The Sun has been more active over the past century or so, increasing the magnetic field around the solar system and making it more difficult for cosmic rays to penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. When there are more cosmic rays striking the Earth, more clouds form in the atmosphere than at times when there are less cosmic rays. The greater the amount of cloud cover, the more sunlight reflected back into space, which causes the earth to cool. Right now, due to the active Sun, cosmic rays and cloud cover are lower than in the past, causing the Earth to warm.
The IPCC report that came out recently said that it was "90% likely" that human activity was the cause of global warming. However, their research did not take into account this natural increase or decrease in cosmic rays/clouds due to solar variation. For them, human activity was the only variable they looked at, and the only variable they WANTED to look at, and their acolytes like Ellen Goodman have declared that "global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future." Frankly, I consider that to be a bit over-the-top, and given that there are other possible hypotheses out there, more than a bit arrogant. These mainstream media mavens would have you believe that this issue has been settled to the satisfaction of all of the world's scientists. That simply is not the truth.
As I have written before, these self-annointed experts are the ones who would fly in their private planes and drive their SUVs while we peons scratched at the ground with sticks to grow crops to feed them, after their "thirty Kyotos" effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They would have no problem with the idea of wrecking our economy to "fix" something that may quite possibly be the Sun's fault rather than our own!
Here's another article about the cosmic ray hypothesis. Feel free to do something "scientific" and think for yourself. Don't feel the need to follow the dogma of the "global warming" alarmists, although be aware that if you don't, you may be ostracized for failing to adhere to orthodoxy. Go ahead. Be a free-thinker. You might discover that a so-called "inconvenient truth" might be neither one nor the other.
