Warming and cooling cycles are more directly tied in with astronomical influences than they are with human-caused carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, some scientists now say.

Recent observations point to a strong link between “solar variability” – or fluctuations in the sun’s radiation – and climate change on Earth, while other research sees the sun as just one of many heavenly bodies affecting global warming in the later half of the 20^th century.

Contrary to what has been stated in a “Summary for Policymakers” attached to the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report -- and in subsequent press coverage of the report -- there is scant evidence in favor of human-caused global warming, according to geologists, astrophysicists, and climatologists who have released updated studies.

The IPCC report was issued most recently in February 2007.

An examination of warming and cooling trends over the last 400 years shows an “almost exact correlation” between all of the known climate changes that have occurred and solar energy transmitted to the Earth, while showing “no correlation at all with CO2,” Don J. Easterbrook, a geologist with Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., told CNSNews.com.

The isotopes located in Greenland’s ice core, along with layering features, make it possible to date and track some of the climate changes that have occurred, he explained. Consequently, he has identified about 30 warming and cooling cycles that have taken place reaching back over the past several hundred years.

“Only one in 30 shows any correlation with CO2,” he said. “So if you’re a baseball player with 30 at bats, that’s not a very good average.”

The ice core records also show that after the last Ice Age ended, temperatures rose for about 800 years before CO2 increased, Easterbrook pointed out in a recent paper. This demonstrates that “climatic warming causes CO2 to rise, not vice-versa,” he wrote.

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