Geoscience Reference
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shown in Fröhlich's 2009 paper was based on at most only three data points , and this
one stunning fact should be enough to shy any objective scientist away from attributing
importance to the result. 24 Yet the IPCC asserts that changes in the sun's irradiance over
the past 1000 to 10,000 years must be small on the basis of Steinhilber's ill-evidenced but
convenient result. 25
The IPCC cites the 2011 paper by Gavin Schmidt et al. as the best and most
representative of the state of knowledge on reconstructing total solar irradiance, while
condemning as flawed other recent studies of sun-like stars. 26 Schmidt et al. propose that
climate models should adopt their novel 1000-year solar irradiance reconstruction which
features anartificially imposedeleven-year cycle intotal solarirradiance. Thecurrentstate
of knowledge does not support that approach; insufficient evidence exists either in direct
measurements or in any reconstruction of total solar irradiance for the past climate.
Selective citation from the scientific literature by the IPCC is clearly evident and its
impact is serious. The sun's irradiance covers many wavelengths, primarily from infrared
to visible light to ultraviolet. Solar ultraviolet radiation is known to be a very important
influence on the amount of ozone in the stratosphere and it controls how much energy
large-scale planetary waves can carry from the surface and from the climatically active
region of the atmosphere to achieve dynamic equilibrium. It is puzzling that the IPCC's
Fifth Assessment Report never mentioned the 2011 paper by Fontenla et al., which is the
best available scientific paper on the physical basis of, as opposed to the statistical or
numericalmodelingof,solarirradiance. 27 Fontenlaetal.accountformanyofthemagnetic
field structures and other features that are observed on the sun and contribute to solar
variability.
Furthermore, the IPCC has gravely misrepresented the work of two scientists from
the U.S. National Solar Observatory. In papers from 2009 and 2011, Livingston and Penn
concluded, on the basis of direct measurement of the trend in the magnetic fields of
sunspots, that if current trends were to continue, large sunspots might soon altogether
disappear from the face of the sun. 28 Instead, the IPCC in 2013 wrote that Livingston and
Penn had suggested that only 'half' of the sunspots might disappear. Specifically, the two
solarphysicistshadwrittenintheir2009paper,'Asimplelinearextrapolationofthosedata
suggested that sunspots might completely vanish by 2015.' 29 Penn and Livingston further
commented that 'the predicted dearth in sunspot numbers, independent of the eleven-year
sunspotcycle,hasprovenaccurate…[t]hevigorofsunspots,intermsofmagneticstrength
and area, has indeed greatly diminished.' 30 The scientific results and conclusion on the
currentandongoingmagneticstateofoursunbyLivingstonandPennareimportantsimply
because the variation of the sun's energy output is known to be important driver of Earth
climate and that the flat-trending nature of the global temperature for the past fifteen to
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