Steve,

'in a nutshell' the data that you have compiled is erroneous for several
reasons:

1.      you are comparing discrete absolute magnitudes rather than relative
changes in magnitude;

2.      the data actually indicate that the problem of 'human induced'
climate change is more serious than previously thought; the data that
indicate a slight rise in irradience is partially a result loss of ozone in
the stratosphere; higher concentrations of ozone result in greater levels of
irradience due to the destruction of the ozone layer partially brought on by
the release of ozone depleting chemicals in the stratosphere; and

3.      the temporal scales that you use are different; and  importantly,

4.      the magnitude of change from 1990 until recently for solar radience
indicates a very small relative change in comparison with the change in C02
levels.

CO2 is only one factor that impacts on the GHG effect. There are many other
variables such as albedo at the surface of the earth, oceanic sinks &
conveyors, forest cover, humidity, cloud cover, and aerosols that also have
an effect. There are many other atmospheric variables as well such as
nitrous oxides, methane, etc. What you need to do is apply regression onto
the relative changes. Using the C02 concentration as a fixed variable and
then regress this onto the dependent variable of global surface temperature
will only explain some of the variation in global temperature.

The next thing you need to do is to convert the irradience into a relative
index based on percentage change. Then regress this onto the global
temperatue, excluding such effects as the irruption of Pinatubo volcano,
etc. The coefficients for the determination for irradience are completely
useless in your graph because the independent variable [fixed variable is
simply date] so you have not done anything other than regress date onto
solar irradience.

In a nutshell Steve your regression is useless except for prediction solar
irradience between Jan. 1900 and Jan. 1996.

Likely as well in your comment '...I presume, from the numbers, that it's
W/cm^2 outside the atmosphere...' that you know about as much as a frog.

As if they could measure irradiance outside the atmosphere in 1900.
Obviously too you did not know that the rates were in Watts per square
meter. Did you know that Watts is in per second measure. Which means that if
a square centimeter received 1365 Watts per second that we all be in Hell.
Ohh. I mean....some of us might be in hell.

Chao,

jmf



At 12:41 AM 11/25/00 -0800, Steve wrote:
>As many of you know, I have always advocated first trying to determine how
>much of a problem there is with global warming, and what some of the
>causes of the warming are.  Well, I was looking around NASA's Goddard
>Institute for Space Studies website and found some interesting data.  I
>downloaded it and with some other data I just did a simple regression.  I
>posted the results here
>
>http://www.cfis.org/ubb/Forum2/HTML/000244.html
>
>Also graphed there is the data for solar irradience.
>
>The interesting thing is that for the analysis I did, the sun was by far
>the biggest contributing factor, by an order of magnitude over CO2.
>
>I have also provided a link to the data I used.
>
>Steve
>
>=====
>"In a nutshell, he [Steve] is 100% unadulterated evil. I do not believe in
a 'Satan', but this man is as close to 'the real McCoy' as they come."
>--Jamey Lee West
>
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