It used to – before human climate forcing by greenhouse gas emisions took over. Nowdays not so much.

Watch :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Sf_UIQYc20&list=PL029130BFDC78FA33&index=59&feature=plpp

& this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmGIOMN-F4I

(5 minute 50 sec in esp. in that second one.)

Plus read :

http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming-intermediate.htm

which observes that :

.. after 1975, temperatures rose while solar activity showed little to no long-term trend. This led the study to conclude, “…during these last 30 years the solar total irradiance, solar UV irradiance and cosmic ray flux has not shown any significant secular trend, so that at least this most recent warming episode must have another source.” In fact, a number of independent measurements of solar activity indicate the sun has shown a slight cooling trend since 1960, over the same period that global temperatures have been warming. Over the last 35 years of global warming, sun and climate have been moving in opposite directions. An analysis of solar trends concluded that the sun has actually contributed a slight cooling influence in recent decades (Lockwood 2008). [Italics original.]

Incidentally, that’s the second most popular – and long debunked Human Induced Rapid Global Overheating (HIRGO) myth according to the Skeptical Science site. I would recomend checking there (among other places) before posting any supposed “argument” against the consensus that HIRGO is real and a serious issue because otherwise you risk looking fairly foolish.

Or just stop and think for a second – do you really think climatologists would be so thick that they’d overlook the possible influence of our Sun on our climate?

True. I believe I was trying to explain a “sun explosion” video to him when I got into the complex magnetic fields. Meanwhile, my 4 year old was insisting that the sun was on fire.

My other recent science talk with my 8 year old involved the immune system since he was about to get the flu shot. I compared it to giving a bunch of police a wanted poster of a bad guy. Without the wanted poster (vaccine), the police (white blood cells) might not realize that the bad guy (germ/virus) is a bad guy and let him by. By the time they realize, he’d have multiplied into a thousand bad guys and would be hard to take down. Instead, they see the bad guy, remember the wanted poster, and take him down quickly. Of course, my son instantly called the bad guys Doctor Octopus & Venom and the white blood cells Spider-Man. That only made me prouder of him.