To suggest that CO2 could be the cause of this partial warming one must entirely diconnect from logical thought process. This is an act of faith that places one in a place safe from any question or debate.

Surely the solar cycles since the 17th century have been recorded by direct observation (sunspot counting). Any connection between such proxy data as tree rings and ice cores and solar irradiance is a bit more indirect and open to interpretation.

The IPCC details hundreds of studies on the CO2/GHG side. If you want to be taken seriously, you’ll have to much, much better.

http://64.233.183.104/ search?q=cache:dD20PYlss4EJ:www.tmgnow.com/ repository/ global/ CREC.html+average+cloud+cover+of+the+earth&hl=es&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=es&client=firefox-a

I will copy below 3 paragraphs that concentrate on this issue:

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[…] Clouds reflect more energy than they trap and this leads to a cooling in the range of 17 to 35 Wm-2 [21-23]. It is not easy to estimate the net change in radiative forcing from a solar modulation of the cloud cover. The main problem is that it is not known which part of the cloud volume is affected. This is important because different cloud types have different radiative properties. Although the net effect of clouds is to cool the planet, high thin clouds tend to warm the Earth’s surface, and therefore one could imagine that an increase in cosmic ray flux could lead to a warming. However, high thin clouds which tend to warm the Earth’s surface occur in association with high thick cooling clouds, and together the two cloud types tend to mitigate their effect on the energy balance [24]. The results of Fig. 3b seem to suggest that an increase in cloud cover results in a cooling, which again suggest that a larger part of the cloud volume is affected.

From Fig. 3 it is seen that the temperature in the period 1970-1990 rose by approximately 0.3′C. It is possible to compare the variation in cosmic ray flux (assuming it is directly correlated with cloud cover) and this temperature change via some simple assumptions. From cloud satellite observations and numerical cloud modeling it is found that a 1% change in the total composition of Earth’s cloud cover corresponds to 0.5 W/m2 change in net radiative forcing [25]. From Svensmark and Friis-Christensen [7] it is known that from 1987 to 1990 global cloudiness changed approximately 3.0% which can be estimated to be 1.50 W/mZ [7]. In the same period cosmic rays from the ion chamber changed 3.5% as seen in Fig. 2. We can now calculate the approximate radiative forcing by noting that the mean 11 year average increase of cosmic rays in Fig. 3 from 1975 to 1989 is 1.2%, which then corresponds to a possible 0.5 W/m2 change in cloud forcing. This is a fairly large forcing, about 4 times the estimated change in solar irradiance. The resulting temperature change is difficult to estimate exactly. Studies obtained from a general circulation model gave a sensitivity (0.7 to I’C/Wm-2 for DS =0.25%, where S is the solar constant) [26]. The direct influence of changes in solar irradiance is estimated to be only 0.1′C [6]. The cloud forcing, however, gives for the above sensitivity, 0.3-0.5′C, and has therefore the potential of explaining nearly all of the temperature changes in the period studied.

The solar cycle length has been shown to be an important parameter due to its close connection with temperature variations of the Earth. This parameter is determined empirically and it has not been straightforward to interpret. The present work gives a hint on why it is relevant to Earth’s climate. The physical interpretation is based on the close agreement between variations in solar cycle length, GCR flux, and temperature as seen in Fig. 3. The solar cycle length is therefore a measure of the processes occurring within the sun of unknown dynamical origin which manifest themselves in the solar activity within the heliosphere that modulates the GCR, averaged over the solar cycle.
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One can disagree with the conclussions he obtains, but not with the data. There has been a change in the solar flux, indeed. a 3,5% decrease. And there has been a cloudiness reduction, indeed. A 1% decrease. This seems to indicate that cloud formation is related to cosmic rays, to some extent. Further data found in the article supports this. And this has happened during 20 years of increased warming.

I disagree with him anyway because I don’t think that the GCR explains all the heating. GH effect is real, it exists. Only its effect on temperature is not as overwhelmingly important as the alarmists try to persuade us it is.

Here you have another interesting article about relationship between cosmic rays and temperature. The graphs are very clarifying…

http://www.spacecenter.dk/ publications/ scientific-report-series/ Scient_No._3.pdf

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proyecto_Cloud

Beware the unintended consequences of sequestering plant food during the famine.