It'd be nice if Lindzen was right, but Lindzen isn't necessarily right.
Nor Lin, nor the UN/IPCC.
Currently, both Lindzen and Lin stand by their findings and there is ongoing debate between the two teams. At present, the Iris Hypothesis remains an intriguing hypothesis—neither proven nor disproven. The challenge facing scientists is to more closely examine the assumptions that both teams made about tropical clouds in conducting their research because therein lies the uncertainty.
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Historically, it has been very difficult for scientists to measure clouds’ properties in multi-layer cloud formations using passive remote sensors. In 2004, scientists grappling with this problem will gain one of the most powerful tools ever developed for studying multi-layer cloud properties on a global scale.
We learn as we go forward, but to assume that the GCM's are the last word in climate theory & assessment of "global warming" as predominately manmade, as the UN/IPCC would have us believe, is a far cry from the actual state of atmospheric science.
I just wish that occasionally you'd acknowledge that the arguments from the skeptical side (such as Hoyt's scorecard assessments) won't always be right, too.
Lindzens argument is not from Hoyt's sight :) However I do not rely on single source or studies in anycase. The overall picture is what I go for, and to demonstrate the inadequacies of relying on the UN/IPCC models for anything relating to the climate for the next day much less the next century. The point is that reliance on very sketchy and poorly understood science for economic and political policy decisions is a disaster in the making much greater on mankind, than any hypothetical effect that mankind might have on global climate.
Once again we must go back to the UN/IPCC GCM theory about which we argue:
"The biggest uncertainty in climate science is how feedbacks affect the climate. Global warming theory posits that a rise in atmospheric CO2 will only cause a slight warming of the atmosphere, on the order of about 1 degree centigrade. This small amount of warming, according to standard global warming theory, speeds up evaporation, increasing the amount of water vapor, the main greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. This positive feedback is where most of the predicted warming comes from.
Lindzen claims that one problem with the UN/IPCC modeling is that warming feedback from the surface is much less due, at least in part, one theory is the so-called "iris effect" of changing cirrus cloud cover in response to surface heating.
Lin demonstrates the potential of only a minimal warming arising from changing cloud cover from surface feedbacks in CO2 driven models. The Lin results demostrate increases in high cirrus clouds arising from changes in surface temperature, at the least, compensate for increases in lower level clouds arising from that same feedback.
Lindzen demonstrates the potential for an actual cooling sufficient to negate the UN IPCC climate feedbacks.
Above all we need to remember:
Clouds have a hundred times stronger effect on weather and climate than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Even if the atmosphere’s CO2 content doubled, its effect would be cancelled out if the cloud cover expanded by 1%, as shown by H. E. Landsberg: Man-made climatic changes.
In: Proceedings of the symposium on physical and dynamic climatology of the World Meteorological Organization 347 (1974), 262.
Which establishes the effect on surface temperature, that independant variation of the cloud cover has when it is a consequence of variation in solar wind or other external factors as opposed to warming feedback from the surface.
Solar activity impacts surface temperature in at least 3 ways,
1) heating from direct solar irradiation of the surface.
2)solar warming increases the water vapor content of the atmospere(acting as a primary GHG) thus increasing back irradiation of the greenhouse effect from the water vapor dominated environment.
2) changing cloud cover induced by modulation of cosmic ray flux(independant of surface temperature feedbacks) through the Svensmark effect, refer to post #121 above
That is why we see such a strong correlation between solar activity (solar wind & solar irradiation) and surface temperature: A linear regession of solar activity alone (direct irradiation and the solar wind effect on cloud cover through modulation of gamma radiation flux) accounts for nearly the total change in temperature across the last 250yrs encompassing the industrial age.
Top of Atmosphere Solar Irradiation left(dottedline),
Relative Temperature (solidline, 1750 base) right scale.
Hoyt and Schatten 1997