"Mr. Solanki does not know what is causing the sun to burn brighter now or how long this cycle would last.
He says that the increased solar brightness over the past 20 years has not been enough to cause the observed climate changes, but believes that the impact of intense sunshine on the ozone layer and cloud cover could be affecting the climate more than the sunlight itself."
Here's Solanki from an article dated 2004:
"But Professor Sami Solanki, solar physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, is not convinced that the increased activity of the Sun is responsible for global warming.
He says that based on his team's research, the Sun can be responsible for, at most, only a small part of the warming over the last 20 to 30 years.
"Just how large this role is, must still be investigated," he says, "since, according to our latest knowledge on the variations of the solar magnetic field, the significant increase in the Earth's temperature since 1980 is indeed to be ascribed to the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide."
Also, in a 2003 paper, Solanki estimated that the Sun contributed only as much as 30% of the warming since 1970.
Solar activity & climate: is the sun causing global warming?
Thanks for occasionally apprising me of the current state of discussion on the conservative side vis-a-vis global warming.