aleCcowaN: Cant you just explain the problem with those figures and graphs and just show us the correct ones?
Of course, now that finally DC has seen a small beam of sunlight, and Haig won't reply about the subject.
The Total Solar Irradiance is the value of the energy density got from the sun as electromagnetic waves in the full spectrum at the top of the atmosphere, that is, before anything in the Earth can absorb or reflect it. The value in this very moment is about 1316 W/m2, several days past of the year's minimum value. Now the value is going up and it'll reach a maximum of 1408 W/m2 around next January 2nd or so. Why is that? Because the Earth's orbit is elliptic, as Kepler found four centuries ago.
This is the energy the Earth gets from the Sun, and that energy varies wildly around the year, so the Earth temperatures should vary consequently if "the Sun is the cause of the Earth climate and finally the cause of global warming". Well, indeed they vary. In January the planet had an average temperature of 12.7°C while this July is going to have an average temperature between 15.9 and 16.5°C.
So, with little radiation the Earth is warm, with lots of solar radiation the Earth is cool. Why is that? Because of the planet's configuration. The present orbital characteristics make the Southern Hemisphere which is mainly oceans to face the Sun when it its close to the Earth. The Northern Hemisphere, which is about half land and half ocean and in better conditions to be warmed faces the Sun when the whole planet it is its farthest positions.
This gives real sense about how the climate works and how global warming develops. Basically the planet reach different conditions because in the absence of AGW it pretty much loses every day the same energy it gains that day. Everyone knows that, the day is hot, the night is cold; if you are in a dry land far from the sea the daily temperature varies a lot; if you are in a wet location and close to the sea the temperature varies a little.
Greenhouse gasses in excess alter the equation and make some of the thermal energy to remain in the Earth most of the days. Anyway the planet reaches a daily states a loses most of the energy it gets from the Sun. That bit that remains may melt ice but mainly is stored in the oceans. As the oceans have a humongous thermal capacity the daily difference is almost imperceptible, but the climate changes slowly.
Scientists are aware the planet works that way but they want to know if the Sun itself can affect the process so they have to create a value to compare the Sun today with the Sun yesterday and not the TSI that changes as the Earth comes closer and moves away from the Sun as its elliptic orbit dictates. So scientists
create an abstract value called Total Solar Irradiance at One Astronomical Unit, that is, the value the real TSI would have if the Earth had a circular orbit with a radius equal to the average real distance from the Earth to the Sun. This value allows them to study what subtle changes may experience the Sun alone without adding it to the bulk of the climate process.
That generates the kind of figures DC was discussing with Haig. The conclusion is, roughly, the total energy varies so little that it hasn't almost consequences to the planet. It may cause the global temperature to go up 0.1°C at peak of cycle and down -0.1°C when the Sun "calms down" but basically it's cyclical. You have to know it, because you may think the planet is warming madly the years the Sun becomes more active or, on the contrary, you may think the temperature is levelled when the Sun really is becoming less active. But there's other influence that is more important: even though the total energy varies little, the high frequency fraction varies a lot. How much is a lot? It may be the double, for instance. This high frequency fraction, basically short ultra-violet rays never reach the surface but they affect the chemistry in the upper atmosphere. They generate daily more ozone -and much of that ozone degrades daily-. Ozone is also a greenhouse gas, but formed in the highest atmosphere it has influences that are to be carefully studied.
This is basically the state of the question.
Denialists have many treats. The main one is never understanding how the planet works and taking the TSI1UA figure -or better, the 10.7 cm figure- they look for correlations with different temperature sets with the only goal of showing "it must be the Sun". To counterbalance these stupid denialist notions we have to show basically how the planet works. Accepting the TSI1UA figure as the real TSI of the planet is letting the denialists to choose the field to deploy their trickeries. A hell of a mistake.
And what happens with all those papers? Well, when everybody knows what they are talking about, they use TSI as short for TSI1UA, and that's it. Nobody is mixing up what is happening to the Earth and what is happening to the Sun. When a denialist takes those figures and tells "the sun behaves this way so the earth experiences this or that" basically the denialist is talking bull. When somebody tries to counterbalance this from the very figures this shows the person's poor judgement by not understanding both how the climate works and how debate works.
