cc: tom@ocean.tamu.edu, klaus.hasselmann@dkrz.de, hegerl@atmos.washington.edu, bsanter@pcmdi.llnl.gov, taylor13@llnl.gov, sfbtett@meto.gov.uk, allen@wobble.ag.rl.ac.uk date: Tue Oct 3 11:53:12 2000 from: Phil Jones subject: Re: Fwd: EPA science czar Pest & a Stronger Sun no less to: jtkon@ncar.ucar.edu, tim barnett Tim and Jeff, Simon Tett and I went to conference that the press releases relates to. This was in Tenerife last week. The conference was entitled solar variability and climate, but climatologists were very thin on the ground. There were a few good talks on the sun, but many were poor and few of those present seem to take in what I was saying about the observations and the paleo data, nor what Simon said about models and detection. Many in the solar terrestrial physics community seem totally convinced that solar output changes can explain most of the observed changes we are seeing. The far-sighted ones are begining to doubt with the rapid rate of recent warming, however. The press releases relate to pre-publicity by the solar terrestrial community to justify the conference, the SOHO mission (which is only 6 years of data !!!) and to give support to a CERN idea (costing at least 2 million UK pounds) to mimic galactic ray bombardment/cloud increase ideas. This latter idea is attempting to prove Svensmark's ideas. There was nothing new at the conference, but the solar terrestrial group are not going to go away. The next IPCC report may keep them quiet for a while, but trying to downplay solar influences in thier mind will probably be impossible. As with the greenhouse skeptics they are so set in their ways and have little comprehension of our literature beyond what they read in Science and Nature. If we do another statement at the end of the present work, we should perhaps consider explicitly saying something. Can we discuss this for a few minutes in Luneburg. Cheers Phil