Once I understood that the IPCC was playing games, I realized I had a lot of work to do to uncover the rest of the story. It starts with data manipulation.

Where Does the Data Come From?

For the last 80 years, we have far more accurate ways of recording temperature, so the far right hand side of the graph above should come from direct measurements. Weather stations that gather this data differ in quality and consistency, especially over decades as the areas around them develop. A large-scale reassessment of all US weather stations from 1979 to 2008 carefully divided the stations into five classes, from best quality (I) to worst (V). For this period of time, they calculated the per-decade average temperature increases, and found:

Class I and II only (most accurate): 0.155 C

Class III, IV, and V sites only: 0.248 C

NOAA 2015 “adjusted” calculation: 0.309 C

What does that tell you? NOAA is “adjusting” their data to increase warming figures far out of the realm of possibility. The IPCC relies mostly on NOAA data and other similarly adjusted data, which conveniently provides an instant doubling of temperature increase, making all the graphs much steeper after 1980.

The science is extremely complex and uncertain. If you have blind faith in the wrong numbers, you’re going to jump to the wrong conclusions. Anthony Watts has carefully reviewed NOAA’s data and found unscientific manipulation. Watch this 15-minute video* and decide for yourself*:

NOAA continues to “adjust” their data, manufacturing graphs that support the cause.

Smoking gun #2: Government agencies have rigged climate data to support man-made global warming.

Note: It’s easy to find nonscientific articles and videos that “prove” the hockey stick has been validated by updated research and that the sun’s energy doesn’t fluctuate. However, one central tenet of journalism is that you can’t fact-check a source by asking the source, and that’s exactly what most journalists are doing. To fact-check the IPCC, look at the peer-reviewed literature written by scientists who are not in the IPCC.

That’s the greenhouse-gas theory. Now on to more recent research.

Solar Forcing

Many solar variables contribute to the variance we see in temperature: distance, orbit cycles, axis tilt, magnetic fields, sunspots, solar wind, cosmic rays, the passage of earth through our galaxy, etc. Even though the total energy coming from the Sun is nearly constant, a) those tiny fluctuations can make a difference, and b) there are many other factors that can and do change. In particular, magnetic field changes can have significant influence on the shape of the jet stream, and that can influence cloud formation.

Willie Soon, a solar physicist, showed that the tiny variations in incoming solar radiation can have a more direct effect on temperature than CO2 does, but it takes very sensitive measurements and careful analysis to see the signal. Willie and his team first did many months of inspecting data from weather stations in the Northern Hemisphere*, throwing out spurious and made-up measurements, to put an accurate temperature picture together (blue line):

Then they plotted total solar irradiation (TSI) and found a very good first-order correlation, much better than with CO2. The graph above is probably the most accurate picture we have for that time period. Below is a similar exercise for the United States:

Note that this graph accurately shows the most recent cooling trend since 1998 without any hand waving.

Smoking gun #3: Solar fluctuations correlate better with observed temperature fluctuations.

Not only do fluctuations in solar energy drive changes in climate, the oceans react to increases in solar energy by generating clouds that help regulate temperature. Since 2013, much research has been aimed at constructing a more accurate picture of past temperature/solar radiation correlation and developing a realistic solar-driven climate prediction model*, taking the greenhouse effect into account.

Sunspots

Sunspots fluctuate in roughly 11-year cycles. It’s complicated, but in general these cycles show a moderate amount of correlation with temperature. The period of no sunspot activity 400 years ago corresponds to the Little Ice Age, when winters were significantly colder than they are today.

The current cycle peaked in 2014. Solar experts speculate that the next cycle, which starts in 2020, will have fewer sunspots. If that turns out to be true, temperatures could be heading down, rather than up. Reactions to this cooling prediction range from “unlikely,” to “plausible,” to “probable.” Whatever mechanism causes sunspots could be part of the picture, but there are several different solar cycles, different research approaches, and competing theories. They are converging, but it’s a complex work in progress. A single predictive model is still years or decades away.

Hottest Year on Record?

When you hear claims of this year being “the hottest year on record,” you should understand that 1922, 1998, and 2010 were also extremely hot, and the El Niños were extreme then as well. That’s not a trend; that’s a local peak. Look at the last 18 years from satellite data:

How many peaks do you see that are higher than this year’s? Now look at the scale — it’s one degree Celsius from top to bottom. To give you a sense of how up and down this really is, I traced the graph above and put it in perspective of the 20 degrees C (36 degrees F) we might experience in a single day:

Same data, different perspective. Can you see the hottest year on record now? In any given year, several weather stations will record dramatic “all time highs” with no effect on global temperatures.