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Forget all the claims the science is settled, as some smearing activists-in-a hurry are begging us to believe.

The fact is that the debate is just getting started and that the climate issue is very much undecided. The fact that warming has not occurred in 18 years, Antarctic sea ice is at record high levels, and that more than 97% of the climate models have been dead wrong have made life difficult for those insisting the debate is over.

Yesterday German skeptic site Die kalte Sonne here featured a debate in Holland between international skeptics and warmists. Clearly the debate is NOT over.

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A new climate dialogue: How will the gaining solar inactivity impact the climate?

By Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt and Dr. Sebastian Lüning

(Translated/edited by P Gosselin)

Dutch science journalist Marcel Crok is far more successful at bringing climate scientists to a debate. He brings scientists from both camps regularly into discussions at the Climate Dialogue platform. On 15 October 2014 a new debate started on the question of: How much impact would a decades long pause in solar activity have on the climate?

What will happen during a new Maunder Minimum?

According to the latest IPCC report, AR5, the influence of the sun on our climate since pre-industrial times, in terms of radiative forcing, is very small compared to the effect of greenhouse gases. According to some more skeptical scientists such a small solar influence is counterintuitive. The Little Ice Age, the period roughly from 1350 to 1850, in which winters on the Northern Hemisphere could be severe and glaciers advanced, coincided with the so-called Maunder Minimum, a period of supposedly low solar activity. In their eyes, the sun therefore still is a serious candidate to also explain a substantial part of the warming since pre-industrial times. Sunspot records since 1600 suggest there has been a considerable increase in solar activity in the 20th century leading to a Grand Solar Maximum or Modern Maximum. However recently these sunspot records have come under increasing scrutiny and newer reconstructions show a much ‘flatter’ sunspot history. This challenges the idea of a Modern Maximum. The current solar cycle 24 is the lowest sunspot cycle in 100 years and the third in a trend of diminishing sunspot cycles. Solar physicists expect cycle 25 to be even smaller than Cycle 24 and expect the sun to move into a new minimum, comparable with the Dalton or even the Maunder Minimum. Studying such a minimum with modern instruments could potentially answer a lot of the questions surrounding the influence of the sun on our climate. We are very pleased that no fewer than five (solar) scientists have agreed to participate in this exciting new Climate Dialogue: Mike Lockwood (UK), Nicola Scafetta (US), Jan-Erik Solheim (NO), José Vaquero (ES) and Ilya Usoskin (FI). The introduction and guest posts can be read online below. For convenience we also provide pdf’s: Introduction What will happen during a new Maunder Minimum

Guest blog Mike Lockwood

Guest blog Nicola Scafetta

Guest blog Jan-Erik Solheim

Guest blog Ilya Usoskin

Guest blog José Vaquero

Here you can go to the climate dialogue Klimadialog. You can join in the discussion. This is an exemplary action that brings both sides to a table in a professionally moderated format. The Climate Dialogue web platform is supported by the Netherlands Ministery for Infrastructure and Environment.

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Cooling climate in 21st Century

While warmists Lockwood, Usoskin and Vaquero stick to the position that the sun plays only a minor role in modulating the earth’s climate, the skeptic scientists have a very different view:

Jan-Erik Solheim:

Most of the warming in the 20th century is due to the sun. According to the latest IPCC report, AR5, the influence of the Sun on our climate since pre-industrial times, in terms of radiative forcing, is very small compared to the effect of greenhouse gases. Figure 1 in the introduction (SPM.5 in AR5) is quite misleading, since it compares the TSI at solar minimum around 1745 with TSI around minimum in 2008. They are apparently the same. This covers the fact that the Sun has changed quite a lot in the time between.”

And he adds at his conclusion:

The sunspot cycle will be longer in 21th Century, indicating a cooler climate (Fig 5).”

Nicola Scafetta:

Figures 1-4 provide a strictly alternative message to the one proposed by the IPCC. The Sun must have contributed significantly to climate changes and will continue to do so.”