Are sunspots prime suspects in global warming?

Climate-change ‘optimists’ say complex natural cycles may be at the heart of global warming.

It’s a modern-day climate scuffle William Herschel would recognize. He should. He helped trigger it.

In 1801, the eminent British astron
He suggested that shifts in grain prices were a stand-in for shifts in climate. Large numbers of sunspots led to a warmer sun, he reasoned. With more warmth reaching Earth, crop yields would increase, depressing grain prices.

With that, a 200-year hunt began for links between shifts in the sun’s output and changes in climate.

No one doubts that the sun drives Earth’s climate. Nor do researchers doubt that over long time spans, changes in the level of sunlight reaching Earth’s surface leave their imprints on climate.

The vast bulk of research to date, however, points to greenhouse gases