Now I realize that those of us who question the theory that human beings are destroying the planet through emissions of greenhouse gases are scheduled to be tried for crimes against humanity by the climate-change alarmists, far-left, and the lapdog media, but science demands that questions be asked and data be examined -- lest it become religion instead.

Which leads, of course, to this theory, which adequately explains such issues as why the average temperature in Antarctica is dropping, and why the amount of sea-ice in that region is increasing?

The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.

That levelling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago.

Climate history and related archeology give solid support to the solar hypothesis. The 20th-century episode, or Modern Warming, was just the latest in a long string of similar events produced by a hyperactive sun, of which the last was the Medieval Warming.

The Chinese population doubled then, while in Europe the Vikings and cathedral-builders prospered. Fascinating relics of earlier episodes come from the Swiss Alps, with the rediscovery in 2003 of a long-forgotten pass used intermittently whenever the world was warm.

What does the Intergovernmental Panel do with such emphatic evidence for an alternation of warm and cold periods, linked to solar activity and going on long before human industry was a possible factor? Less than nothing. The 2007 Summary for Policymakers boasts of cutting in half a very small contribution by the sun to climate change conceded in a 2001 report.

Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with inconvenient discoveries about how the solar variations control the climate. The sunÂ’s brightness may change too little to account for the big swings in the climate. But more than 10 years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism.

He saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sunÂ’s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier.

What's more, this theory works in a laboratory setting, and is therefore testable in a way that the current global warming consensus is not. What's more, it includes what is, after all, the most common sense source of the earth's temperature -- the Sun. Now I realize that the big ball of gas is inconvenient to all the big bags of gas that bloviate about global climate change being the fault of mankind -- but the evidence needs to be much more carefully studied and considered, as it provides a simpler explanation for the constant climate variation that can be documented over the course of centuries, not just decades.

Maybe we should call that evidence an inconvenient truth.

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