Original article (in Slovenian) was published on 18/11/2024; Author: Žan Premrov
A 2016 study published in the scientific journal Solar Physics shows the Earth’s temperature has risen by 0.08 to 0.1 degrees Celsius over the past four centuries due to the Sun.
“The fake ‘climate crisis’ is the biggest hoax in the history of mankind. The weather constantly changes, which is caused by the Sun. Man-made global warming is not a threat,” Branko Grims, a member of the European Parliament for the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), claimed on X in a 30 October post as he reposted a conversation with Patrick Moore, former director of Greenpeace, an independent international organisation, published by Wide Awake Media.
According to scientists at Cornell University in the US, who published a study in 2021 analysing peer-reviewed scientific research on the human impact on climate change, more than 99% of the research published since 2012 confirms that human activity affects the climate. The authors’ analysis was based on more than 88,000 studies, of which a random sample of 2,718 was examined in more detail. Of these, only four studies denied that humans have an impact on climate change.
In a paper published in the scientific journal Solar Physics in 2016, researchers from the University of Colorado and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, in conjunction with the US Navy’s Space Science Division, analysed historical data on solar irradiance. They found that the Sun’s impact on climate change is small, having caused a temperature rise of only 0.08 to 0.1 degrees Celsius over the past four centuries. According to data by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the average global temperature has risen by at least 1.1 degrees Celsius since 1880, with the fastest rate of increase occurring since 1975, at about 0.15 to 0.20 degrees per decade.
As Gregor Vertačnik from the Slovenian Environment Agency (ARSO) explained to Razkrinkavanje.si, the main way in which the Sun exerts its impact is through the day-night and seasonal cycle of heating and cooling of the Earth’s surface. However, the impact of the Sun is much smaller on a longer time scale, as the Sun’s irradiance, and thus the solar energy arriving on the Earth, varies little through time.
The Sun’s contribution to global warming is small, Vertačnik noted. Solar insolation increased from 1900 to around 1970, then decreased, and did not change significantly in 1986-2019. The authors of the sixth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have found that the Sun has a very small impact on changes to the Earth’s climate. Vertačnik pointed out, citing the IPCC report, that greenhouse gases together contribute ten to a hundred times more to current climate change than the Sun.
As the authors of the IPCC report pointed out, humans are the driving force of a warming atmosphere. They added that global temperatures have risen by 0.8 to 1.3 degrees Celsius more from 2010 to 2019 than from 1850 to 1900, and that nature has had little impact on the change.
In a summary for policy makers published in 2022, the IPCC outlined both the short- and long-term threats posed by climate change. It warned that global warming will put many ecosystems at high or very high risk of biodiversity loss in the near future. Rising sea levels will inundate coastal settlements and infrastructure, while warming will increase pressure on food production and availability, particularly in vulnerable areas, threatening food security, it added.
In the interview shared by Grims, Moore said that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is now lower than it has been for almost the entire history of the Earth. As we reported in May this year, global temperature changes over the last several hundred thousand years correlate with changes in the carbon dioxide concentration of the atmosphere. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, atmospheric CO2 levels have been rising steadily since modern measurements began in 1958, and last year they were the highest on record.
In a 2019 press release, Greenpeace said that Moore was taking advantage of his long-standing ties with their organisation to act as a spokesperson and proxy for corporations, usually advocating positions that Greenpeace opposes. He often presents himself as a founder or co-founder of the organisation, a claim which Greenpeace disputes.
We have informed Branko Grims of our findings. We will publish his response when we receive it.
The claim that the climate crisis is a hoax is not true.
However, because the Sun is partly responsible for climate change, we consider the claim to be unsubstantiated according to the Razkrinkvanje.si methodology.
The claim that we are not threatened by “man-made global warming” is false.
