Six Apart started a working group in February 2006 to improve the Trackback protocol with the goal to eventually have it approved as

Very resourceful information.

The page about “Empirical evidence for a nonlinear effect of galactic cosmic rays on clouds” has been moved to:

http://secamlocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staff/dbs202/publications/2006/harrison2006.pdf

Nothing as fast changing as the Internet…

Ferdinand

The response of Shaviv, Svensmark and others are direct critiques of the original Lockwood and Frohlich article. That is a kind of real peer review (don’t know who did the original peer review), again, as the best peer review is by competing scientists. The most important point is that L&F used a different satellite composite than the original authors of the satellite software, which caused a lot of discussion. And important too is that a third (neutral) party, the Belgian KMI, has a similar conclusion as the ACRIM specialists, thus not confirming the L&F findings.

About Svensmark: please read the response of Svensmark… He was attacked by Peter Laut about his galactic cosmic rays (GCR) hypothesis:
soleil_031223_Laut_Solar_activity_climate_hypotheses.pdf

Peter Laut, co-author of the article against GCR, has something personal against solar scientists and even discusses graphs he makes himself, but says that solar scientists have made them!

From: http://www.dsri.dk/getfile.php3?id=290

Then DL go on claiming that Lassen and Friis-Christensen (2000) (LFC) provided an update of their original paper. This is true, but it is certainly not the figure that DL show in their Fig. 1b! DL postulate that the figure is “an update as presented by LFC” and state that “they [LFC] arrive at a different curve (Figure 1 b)”. The figure is, however, actually produced by Laut himself (!) (see Laut (2003)), which makes the subsequent discussion by DL on what LFC “draw special attention to” in the figure and whether the curve “exhibits … the claimed agreement” an almost surreal experience to read.

More in-depth reaction: http://tinyurl.com/24o93o

I am not fully convinced of the GCR hypothesis, but there is some empirical evidence:
http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/cag/publications/2006/harrison2006.pdf

Anyway, whatever the pathway is, there is a clear influence of solar cycles on climate.

About climate sensitivity: Arrhenius was wrong, see:
http://home.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/arrhrev.htm

The sensitivity of 3 K for 2xCO2 is far from settled, and is mainly what current climate programs incorporate. There are different estimates for climate sensitivity, see: http://home.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/howmuch.htm

The base warming from CO2 doubling is less than 1 K, 1.2 K including water vapor feedback. Other feedbacks (especially clouds and aerosols) are very unsure, even their signs…

Climate scientists like Hansen based the 3 K/2xCO2 on the ice ages, as he assumes that without CO2 feedback, the temperature change would be smaller. But there is no measurable CO2 feedback, neither during the end of the Eemian (the previous interglacial), nor at the LGM-Holocene transition. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/eemian.html and
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/epica5.gif
The latter graph with thanks to André van den Berg.

There is only one temperature record (as far as reliable) for the past century. If natural variability was more important, then the sensitivity for CO2 must be lower, or one can not reproduce the temperature record of the previous century without overshoot. That implies a lower sensitivity for CO2 than for other (natural) forcings. And that is exactly the discussion between Hansen/Mann/Schmidt at one side and a lot of European climate specialists at the other side…

Just a couple of quick responses for now – time for bed after – I’ll try to come back again tomorrow.

You and your colleagues argue that Climate Audit does a valuable job because even peer-revised science requires audit of the figures? And then you rely upon Svensmark (look at the history of his “solar causes warming” papers) – writing in a non-peer reviewed article? It is to laugh.

You’ve drawn the wrong conclusion. Given that we have a reasonable fix on the science which produces climate sensitivities to CO2 in the region of 3K (starting with Arrhenius at 6K et seq), the implication of recent warming not resulting mostly from CO2 is that we’ve got a lot more to come than we thought. That wouldn’t be comforting, if it were true.