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We've got the whole analysis but just clicking here, thanks! What I'm seeing as the core of the work is the Lockwood's correlations on the right.
Compare to my post 75.
What Lockwood's using for air temp is "based primarily on meteorological station measurements (Hansen et al. 1999)" --and that can go a long way to explain why he's showing such an enormous spike in the last six years of the 20th century.
Let's do our own peer review now, and this is where the layman is crucial --after all, most voters are laymen. Lockwood failed to show solar flux numbers for that temp spike, but anyone who's ever used a thermometer before can make a judgment on the wisdom of saying how hot the earth is by looking at a few crowded cities. My take is that satellite temps vs sunspots could tell us a lot more.
More importantly, as bad as we want to paint the solar/temp connection, consider how much worse the CO2/temp connection looks under this same scrutiny.
Your welcome.
I'm going to try to struggle through the report but - no promises. Too many things I don't know or am not sure of. For example, a preliminary glance at the report indicates that he used some kind of mathematical smoothing procedure to reveal trends in the time period of interest to him. I have no idea whether that procedure is considered valid to his peers.
Ok, I've read the paper thoroughly -
once.
It's highly technical and I, as a layman, do not feel qualified to critique it. There's simply too much I do not understand - about the reliability of data collection, about modeling techniques, about what is acceptable theoretically and what is not. This is the first such technical paper I've read and I'll have to read it several more times simply to be able to talk about it comfortably.
But, you've asked for a layman's opinion and I'll give you mine. Lockwood begins by talking about the proposed mechanisms by which solar variations supposedly influence climate on earth. He discounts the 11 year solar cycle because it is modulated by the oceans and looks at longer trends in the relevant parameters. He finds that these are all in decline while global temperatures are rising and therefore they can not be use to explain what has happened in the last 25 to 40 years (or perhaps it would be better to say that they've moved in directions opposite to what one would expect if they were responsible for climate change during this period). He is at pains to point out that there's much we do not understand about extraterrestrial forcings and - in particular - about variations in solar activity so that no conclusions can be drawn about future correlations...or lack of. The heart of his argument - for me - lies in the last paragraph of section 4 and in section 5, conclusions.
I await the comments of the well-known climate skeptics with international reputations. Will they agree with him, or not? With what caveats? It is interesting that the first such person - the Israeli scientist mentioned in the Guardian - has had to propose a totally new mechanism (if the newspaper is to be believed). Not a very good start for the skeptics.
For the amateurs who think they've caught Lockwood in simple graphical or mathematical errors, in obvious omissions of well-known facts, or in believing results posted from ground-stations located next to large incinerators...I say seek professional help. The sooner the better.