By Vijay Jayaraj

Mainstream media like CNN are good at twisting reality to suit their agendas, presenting half-truths to the audience.

But sometimes they overdo this and it backfires. Then it reveals their desperation. Such was the case with a recent article on climate change.

Climate-change fearmongering generates lot of viewership, and CNN generally doesn’t ignore this topic for a long time.

Recently CNN published an article that contradicted the network’s own statements on the relationship between the sun and earth’s climatic system.

The article — written by a person with no expertise in climate change or physical sciences — takes twists and turns at will with the sole aim to sell climate fear.

It begins by stating the obvious truth that a period of low solar activity caused the earth’s temperatures to drop sharply, especially during the 17th century, in what is known as the Little Ice Age. The article also affirms that the sun has been observed to be in another lull now, akin to the one in the 17th century.

But then it makes a swift turn and declares that the current solar minimum will not cause a Little Ice Age, as it during before.

The author quotes a few theories and predictions by a few scientists to conclude that anthropogenic global warming is so intense that it will negate the solar minimum’s cooling effect.

The article’s quoted source reads, “Even if a Grand Solar Minimum were to last a century, global temperatures would continue to warm. Because more factors than just variations in the Sun’s output change global temperatures on Earth, the most dominant of those today being the warming coming from human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.”

This statement is the only justification used to declare that the solar minimum is incapable of ushering in a Little Ice Age or sharp fall in global average temperatures.

However, the most recent climate behavior suggests that this claim — that human-induced warming is the dominant driving factor of global average temperatures — is scientifically inaccurate.

In the last five decades, satellite temperature measurements show that global average temperatures (GAT) do not correlate significantly with the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

For example, the GAT did not show corresponding increase between 2000 and 2014 despite a sharp rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations. This was affirmed in a peer-reviewed academic paper by a team of highly qualified scientists who work with the United Nations team for climate change.

Likewise, this non-correlation (and the non-causal relationship between CO2 and GAT) was revealed when scientists observed how computer models failed to reflect real world temperatures because of their faulty assumptions of a human-induced warming.

Historically too, the rise in greenhouse gas emissions was never the primary driver of the major changes that occurred in GAT. Although they do almost certainly make the lower atmosphere warmer than it otherwise would be, the theory that human-induced emissions are the dominant driver of GAT is false, not supported by either recent climate behavior or long-term historical data.

By discrediting the influence of the sun on our climate system, the article blindly seeks to establish that we are headed towards a global warming doomsday because of man-made climate change.

In the process, the author undermines all available evidence on the sun’s influence on GAT and instead asks the readers to trust a prediction that is rooted in faulty computer models that have failed time and time again.

No one knows how the current solar minimum will play out. But it is illogical to believe that human-induced emissions can negate much stronger and bigger influencers on the climate, and it is unscientific to resort to fortunetelling future climate states based on faulty models.

Vijay Jayaraj (M.Sc., Environmental Science, University of East Anglia, England) is a research contributor for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.