When the climate narrative was in the opposite direction!
No one should deny that the climate is changing. It is a complex system that is constantly in flux. One thing that one must remember is that it is a system that tries to maintain homeostasis. There is a linkage in feedback loops. The earth receives more energy from the sun. This causes the oceans to warm releasing CO2. The increase in CO2 causes additional insulation trapping more heat. This additional heat causes the oceans to warm releasing CO2. The increase in CO2 causes additional insulation trapping more heat (etc). There is a lag in this feedback loop. It takes decades and centuries for the entire planet to be affected by this process. Some indications that it might take as much as 800 years for this to take effect. Aside from humans contributing CO2, it is probable that a significant proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere today is due to the feedback from the Medieval Warming period centuries ago.
Considering only the effects of the sun and CO2 is insufficient to explain climate effects. Consider also another greenhouse gas ... water vapour. As the ocean warms, more water vapour is released to the atmosphere creating clouds. This has a cooling effect by increasing the albedo of clouds. This reflective quality of clouds can vary from less than 10% reflection to as much as 90% reflection.
So in a "first-level" analysis of climate change only looking at the solar activity we would draw one set of predictions and a "second-level" analysis of climate change including CO2 levels of solar activity we would draw a set of predictions which would have a reinforcing effect on the solar activity and "third-level" analysis of climate change including water vapour which has a lessening effect we slowly start creating a formula which would be more accurate:
Climate Change = A + B - C
Obviously the formula would have complex interactions and contain additional elements. It is interesting that many of the "experts" who deride the overly simplified explanation of solar activity based climate change stop short of going beyond the CO2 narrative:
Even the "experts" who are worried about increased CO2 will cause increased temperatures that will cause polar ice to melt will cause oceans to rise will cause shorelines to be flooded fail to take into consideration that what will inconvenience some people will benefit others. Increased greenhouse gases have been seen to also increase the greening of the planet which has increased food production and would make other areas of the world inhabitable.
It also makes the assumption that having an increase in ice-melt doesn't have additional effects on the planet. For instance, the increased water in the Pacific pushes down on the Pacific tectonic plate and other tectonic plates around the planet. Evidence of this might be an increase in volcanic activity around the Ring of Fire. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we are not seeing the anticipated increase in water level in Australia and some of the Island nations. We wouldn't see an immediate correction along the Atlantic coastline because the fault line runs down the center of the ocean. It will take many years for the mass of water in the Atlantic to flow around to the Pacific.
You must appreciate some of the climate change activists because they acknowledge that climate doesn't occur over one or two years. They make the argument that one must look at decades in order to arrive at that decision. Certainly, during the '70s, the narrative was not that we had global warming - we had global cooling. That research was no less valid then than it is today. The data has not changed. It is just that that line of reasoning has been set aside. If I asked you to describe the moon, at some point you would say it is a circular white object in the sky, while at another point you would say it was a white crescent shape in the sky and at another point, you would say it was a dark object in the sky. All are correct.
The reality is that we are currently in an ice age if you look at a longer perspective of time. We just have less snow on the ground. Sixty million years ago, the temperatures were 18 degrees warmer and the forest ranged from pole to pole.