[Pretzel Logic]

Just a follow up as I have continued to investigate this topic this week. Looking at the thread from a few years ago there were several posts about research by some Danish scientists on how cosmic rays may lead to more clouds. I believe this is a possible cause for global temperature change, although it's far from a strong theory yet. When our solar system is in one part of the galaxy that has more cosmic rays, then we are going to have more clouds and colder weather. When the sun goes through its 11-year cycle of solar flares and that affects the cosmic rays that reach Earth, we get more or less cloud cover. OK, plausible theory. Have we seen a secular trend in cosmic rays in recent decades to explain the warming of our planet? According to NOAA data, we have not (https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/solar/cosmicrays.html). If not, then there must be something else going on. Sure, cosmic rays can change our global temperature over millions (or billions) of years, but over 5 decades? In the past 50 years we haven't moved to another part of the galaxy. Also, there's been no measurably significant change in the solar activity to point to either (other than the 11-year cyclical changes as shown in the NOAA data that don't trend like global temperatures have over the last century). There are lots of things in the universe that can impact global temperature, but we are looking for something that can explain the warming over 100 years or less. Cosmic rays doesn't fit for that.

Just wanted to let you know that I've been pretty busy for the last few days -- and I don't want to give any quick replies to your prior post (since we know how well THAT approach worked out!) -- but I'm expecting to have more free time later this week.

Regarding the past 50 to 100 years, though -- the reason I have trouble reading too much into recent trends is that the earth's 50-year, 100-year, 1000-year, 10,000-year, million-year, (etc.) cycles are another area where we don't really seem to have enough concrete data to go beyond educated guesses as to what temperature is "supposed" to be right now. So who can really say for certain that temperatures over the last 100 years weren't/aren't exactly what they were supposed to be, naturally? Please note that I'm NOT saying "current temperatures are most definitely natural" -- I'm just saying "we don't really know for certain if they are or aren't natural, so we should probably keep an open mind to all possibilities until there is concrete proof to rule out any particular possibility."