The Changing Sun

Fanatics on the earth insist on human control of climate to keep it unchanging. Meanwhile, old Sol insists on changing. Here's a bit from a news release by NASA on data gathered so far by the TIMED (Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics) mission:

New measurements from a NASA satellite show a dramatic cooling in the upper atmosphere that correlates with the declining phase of the current solar cycle. For the first time, researchers can show a timely link between the Sun and the climate of Earth’s thermosphere, the region above 100 km, an essential step in making accurate predictions of climate change in the high atmosphere.

Scientists from NASA’s Langley Research Center and Hampton University in Hampton, Va., and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., presented these results at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco from Dec. 14 to 18.

Earth’s thermosphere and mesosphere have been the least explored regions of the atmosphere. The NASA Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) mission was developed to explore the Earth’s atmosphere above 60 km altitude and was launched in December 2001. One of four instruments on the TIMED mission, the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) instrument, was specifically designed to measure the energy budget of the mesosphere and lower thermosphere. The SABER dataset now covers eight years of data and has already provided some basic insight into the heat budget of the thermosphere on a variety of timescales.
Energy emitted by the upper atmosphere as infrared (IR) radiation in 2002 (top) and 2008 (bottom) -- In this SABER plot, Nitric Oxide (NO) is the IR emitter.
The extent of current solar minimum conditions has created a unique situation for recent SABER datasets, explains Stan Solomon, acting director of the High Altitude Observatory, National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. The end of solar cycle 23 has offered an opportunity to study the radiative cooling in the thermosphere under exceptionally quiescent conditions.

“The Sun is in a very unusual period,” said Marty Mlynczak, SABER associate principal investigator and senior research scientist at NASA Langley. “The Earth’s thermosphere is responding remarkably — up to an order of magnitude decrease in infrared emission/radiative cooling by some molecules.”

The lesson I draw from this is that all the climate "modelling" is fairly worthless until the models are validated, i.e. there is enough understanding of all the elements of climate change and these are properly included in the models. Current models ignore the sun. They can't postdict previous climate regimes. So why are politicians willing to sell our future out in favour of fanatics who want to put a stop to a better future in order to put us into a worse past?

I'm not a climatologist, but I'm not a fool. It is pretty evident to me that the climate "scientists" are selling a story, a likely story, but science isn't literature. It is hard facts with sound theories. The fanatics have only a pretense of this. The fanatics realize their "dream". A lot of climate "scientists" get showered with money. But the rest of us get hosed by fanatics. It has happened many, many times in the past. Why is this any different? Sadly, the voices of caution and moderation are drowned out by fanatics. The siren song of certainty overwhelms the average Joe in the street. The mantra is "the science is settled". Nuts to that!