In the April 2009 edition of Digit we take a critical look at green technology and the science of climate change. This is a complex subject, and we are unable to give a comprehensive list of references in the magazine. Typing in links from a magazine is also tiresome, and so we give on this page references and links to the scientific literature that influenced the article. Enjoy...

Regarding the general effects of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, so bizarrely labelled a pollutant by green activists, see the paper Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.

To see some of the crazy, and often frightening, statements made by green activists, see this site in favour of global warming, and also this one.

On the ice core data used misleadingly in Al Gore's film, and further information on the subject, see Paleoclimate and CO2, Temperature and CO2 over the Past 400 Thousand years.

For a detailed analysis of the many "errors" in Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth", see Christopher Monckton.

It is usually considered that the British astronomer William Herschel was the first scientist to describe a link between changes in solar activity and changing climate, just over two hundred years ago. He noticed a link between sunspot numbers and the price of corn, and put this down to solar activity affecting climate, and hence the success, and pricing, of crops. For further details, see Herschel's most important paper on this subject: Observations tending to investigate the Nature of the Sun, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, (1801) 91: 265-318. His discussion of the possible influence on climate starts on page 311.

On the modern solar theory of climate change, see this article by Henrik Svensmark; also this article by Laurence Hecht. Svensmark also has a book on the subject, "The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change". Also, see the new edition: "The Chilling Stars, 2nd Edition: A Cosmic View of Climate Change". We have not seen the latter yet, and so cannot comment.

Another paper, data from which was used in two charts in the Digit article, is by Willie Soon.

Also, for a description of how the modern solar theory explains the ice ages of the last half billion years, see the paper Celestial driver of Phanerozoic climate?by Nir J. Shaviv and Ján Veizer. Shaviv's blog, sciencebits.com, is well worth the occasional visit. His section on Weather Physics is the one relevant to this subject, but the rest of the blog contains much interesting material, from the trivial to the serious.

A comprehensive overview of the solar theory and introduction to the CLOUD experiment is published by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, by Jasper Kirkby, here. This paper includes a very comprehensive list of references to the relevant scientific literature. Also of interest from CERN is the original press release announcing the CLOUD experiments, the logical extension of the work of Henrik Svensmark:New Experiment to Investigate the Effect of Galactic Cosmic Rays on Clouds and Climate.

Another paper on the cosmic ray and cloud aspect of the solar theory is Atmospheric Ionization and Clouds as Links Between Solar Activity and Climate. As with the other papers, this one gives many references to other relevant scientific literature. In addition, a useful list of other relevant scientific papers is given here.

Much data relevant to climate change is now obtained from satellites and available on the internet, often updated every few minutes. A good example that is worth following is the state of the Sun - solar activity is currently very low. Much data is available here.

For the changes made to the scientific conclusions in the IPCC's 1996 report, see the Wall Street Journal article, A major deception on 'global warming'. Also see here for the same article and another on the same subject.

For the critique of the infamous hockey stick graph, published by the IPCC, see the paper by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick. That link is to a page on Steve McIntyre's blog, ClimateAudit, which features detailed discussions and analysis of much of the data that is relevant to climate science. It was McIntyre who discovered errors in NASA's published climate data last year, forcing the data to be republished after correction. Instead of showing, as it had, 1998 as the hottest year in the last century, the corrected data gave 1934 as the hottest.

To see one academic's interesting view of the politics of the global warming scare, see this page by Professor John Brignell.

Still scared of global warming? Then see this pagefor a description of some of the disastrous consequences of the Little Ice Age, that according to the IPCC and its hockey stick graph, never actually happened! Also, if possible, check out the chapter on the Little Ice Age in Brian Fagan's book "Flood, Famines, and Emperors: El Niño and the Fate of Civilizations". Fagan has written extensively about the impact on human civilisations of the various and often dramatic climate changes that have occurred through history. The best documentation of the effects of the Little Ice Age comes from Europe, but it was not a localised event; evidence for the Little Ice Age itself is found around the world, for example, in China.