At COTTonLINE we have maintained that climate changes, and that nobody really knows for sure in which direction or for what reasons. The "received wisdom" is that CO2 is a major factor, and that because CO2 is increasing, climate will warm.
Go see this post at No Tricks Zone concerning an article in a Danish paper - Jyllands Posten - concerning the views of a solar scientist that CO2 is over-emphasized, while level of solar activity is under-emphasized. His understanding is that we've had a dip in solar activity which could presage a cooling period, a "little ice age" or even a full-blown ice age.
Climate data for the past decade give him support for this view. CO2 has risen, the sun has cooled, and the earth has not gotten hotter.
We don't know if he is correct just like we don't know if the CO2-fearing "global warmists" are correct. The bottom line is that, because there is no way to do experiments to test climate outcomes, whatever science says it "knows" about climate is just reasoning from very limited data.
In this way, climate science is like economics: in both cases we live "inside the experiment," we watch what happens and try to reason about why. We cannot do experiments with either situation.
Solar science is the same, we watch and make educated guesses while the sun does what it's going to do and we live with the consequences. Wish us well.
