Regular readers will know of my admiration for the climate site run by Anthony Watts (WUWT). In it, he has always maintained the highest standards of what I call proper scientific methodology. From his earliest days on the internet it did not take him long to poke and probe into the gaps and crevices which lay beneath the apparently invincible fortification that was man-made global warming (AGW) theory. Now, several years later, we can see the AGW proponents reduced to naked shivering in the cold blast of countless and deadly critiques of both their methodology and their dodgy conclusions.
Even so, most people accept, not least because there is irrefutable evidence, that the temperatures around the globe on land and at sea do vary from time to time and now that the nonsense of CO2 emissions has been obliterated it is a very pertinent question to ask what is, or are, the main cause(s) of these shifts in temperature. In my profound ignorance I simply point to the sun and mutter something to the effect that it's obvious, innit?! But alas, if it only it was that simple!
An indication of just how ferociously complicated it is may be judged by reading the comment thread attached to a post at WUWT. I should warn you that much of it is real 'swottery' of the highest order and thus incomprehensible to me and probably you, too. Even so, if you can skim-read, as I can, then you will skip past all the algebra and jargon and concentrate on those comments written in plain(-ish) English which lay out, sometimes surprisingly clearly, the nature of the various disputes. The 'star' (no pun intended) of this inter-galactic show is Dr. Leif Svalgaard. A man of few words but they are all as sharp as a razor! Over and over again he insists on proofs and on answers to exceedingly pertinent and tricky questions. Suffice to say that he does not believe the sun is a prime-mover in Earth climate but only because no-one has yet come up with a scientific theory which will stand up to his searching criticisms.
Try skim-reading it, at best you will learn a lot, and at worst it will send you off to sleep much quicker than the pills you're taking!