What If Much of the Warming Is in the Thermometers?
Before anyone can explain what caused global warming, there is a more fundamental question that must be answered: how accurately have we measured it?
Dr. Willie Soon has spent more than three decades studying solar physics, solar irradiance and the relationship between the Sun and the Earth’s climate.
An astrophysicist and geoscientist, Soon worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics from 1991 to 2022. In 2018, he founded the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences, known as CERES, where he continues his independent research.
His Chapter 11 contribution to Canary in a Climate World: Climate Realism vs. the Net Zero Myth challenges two foundations of the conventional climate narrative:
- The temperature record may contain substantial warming caused by urban development around weather stations.
- At the same time, the influence of the Sun may have been systematically understated.
In this short video, Dr. John Robson of Climate Discussion Nexus explains why Soon’s research matters.
What does “global temperature” actually mean?
We frequently hear that the global temperature has risen by a precise amount since the late nineteenth century.
But what exactly is being measured?
Soon points out that thermometer coverage before the middle of the twentieth century was sparse, particularly across the Southern Hemisphere. Even where long records exist, many weather stations that were once surrounded by fields or countryside are now surrounded by roads, buildings, vehicles, airports and other heat-retaining infrastructure.
Concrete and asphalt absorb solar energy during the day and release it slowly after sunset. Buildings interfere with natural airflow. Vehicles, air conditioners, industry and human activity generate additional heat.
This creates the well-established urban heat island effect. A thermometer can accurately record an increase in its local temperature. But that does not necessarily mean the broader climate warmed by the same amount.
The instrument may be recording the growth of the city around it.
When urban warming is blended into the countryside
The problem becomes more serious when urban and rural temperature stations are combined.
Soon argues that modern homogenization methods can blend the warming recorded at urban stations into neighbouring rural records. Rather than removing the urban influence, the process may distribute part of that influence across the temperature dataset.
Once that happens, the original rural climate signal becomes extremely difficult to recover.
In the United States, Soon compares the 20 percent most urbanized stations with the 20 percent most rural stations. His chapter reports a difference in warming trends approaching 80 percent.
When he and his colleagues reconstruct temperature records using rural stations alone, Soon says the overall warming trend is reduced by approximately 50 percent.
The rural record also shows alternating periods of warming and cooling rather than a smooth, continuous rise.
This distinction matters enormously.
Climate attribution begins with the temperature record. If that record contains substantial warming caused by urbanization, any attempt to determine how much warming was caused by CO₂ begins with a distorted measurement.
Producing the same result repeatedly does not solve that problem. NASA, NOAA, the UK Met Office and other agencies may produce similar warming curves, but replication does not guarantee accuracy if the datasets share the same underlying bias.
Detection is not attribution
Even if warming has been detected, that does not establish its cause. Detection asks whether temperatures changed. Attribution asks why they changed.
Soon argues that climate assessments place overwhelming emphasis on human-produced ‘greenhouse gases’ while minimizing natural influences, particularly changes in solar activity.
Carbon dioxide may contribute to warming, but Soon says it cannot adequately explain the climate variations that occurred before modern industrial emissions.
The Sun, by contrast, has been influencing the Earth’s climate throughout its history.
The Sun is not a constant light bulb
The Sun provides virtually all the energy that drives the Earth’s climate system, but its influence is more complicated than the amount of visible light reaching the top of the atmosphere.
Changes in ultraviolet radiation, energetic particles, magnetic activity and the solar wind may influence atmospheric chemistry, circulation and cloud-forming processes.
Soon argues that treating the Sun as a nearly static background input is a serious oversimplification.
Reconstructing solar activity before the satellite era is difficult. His chapter notes that there are at least 27 published reconstructions of total solar irradiance. Some indicate relatively small changes, while others show variations large enough to explain a substantial part of observed ‘climate change’.
Soon says earlier IPCC reports considered several solar reconstructions.
By its Sixth Assessment Report, however, the IPCC relied upon a single low-variability reconstruction. That choice has enormous consequences.
If the selected reconstruction assumes very little change in solar activity, the models will inevitably attribute very little climate change to the Sun. The remaining warming is then assigned largely to human-produced ‘greenhouse gases’.
The conclusion depends partly upon the input selected at the beginning. Soon argues that when a wider range of solar reconstructions is considered alongside rural temperature records, natural variability can explain a much larger share of the observed changes.
The temperature record and the Sun belong together
These two issues cannot be separated. Urbanized temperature records show more warming. Low-variability solar reconstructions show less natural influence. Combine the two, and the result points strongly toward CO₂ as the dominant cause of warming.
But use rural temperature records and allow for greater solar variability, and the picture changes substantially.
Soon’s argument is not merely that an alternative interpretation exists. It is that the conventional conclusion was reached after adopting a temperature record that may contain urban contamination and selecting solar estimates that minimize the Sun’s influence.
These are not obscure technical details. They sit at the foundation of climate attribution and the policies built upon it.
When policy begins to shape science
Soon’s chapter also asks why these uncertainties receive so little public attention. His answer is based partly upon personal experience. For decades, his research challenged the preferred climate narrative.
John Robson describes the sustained attempts by outside organizations to discredit Soon, remove him from his position and prevent his work from receiving a fair hearing.
Soon argues that modern scientific research has become deeply dependent upon government funding and institutional approval. Young researchers quickly discover which questions are safe to pursue and which may threaten their careers.
No secret conspiracy is required. The incentives can produce conformity on their own.
Funding flows toward research that supports existing policy priorities. Peer reviewers and journal editors operate within the same institutional environment.
Work that challenges foundational assumptions can be delayed, rejected or marginalized.
The result, Soon writes, is a form of “scientific monoculture.”
Uncertainty is downplayed. Alternative explanations are treated as settled or dismissed.
Complex systems are reduced to simple stories that are easier to communicate, regulate and fund. Eventually, science no longer merely informs public policy. Policy begins to shape the science.
The Sun still matters
Willie Soon’s chapter asks readers to return to first principles.
- Are the temperature records free from urban contamination?
- Do the adjustments preserve the rural climate signal or spread urban warming into it?
- Why were some solar reconstructions accepted while others were excluded?
- How much of the measured warming can be explained by natural variability?
- Have alternative explanations been tested fairly, or filtered out by institutional incentives?
These questions should not be forbidden in science. They are science.
The Sun has shaped the Earth’s climate for billions of years. To assume that its influence has suddenly become negligible requires evidence, not institutional authority.
And before governments restructure energy systems, restrict economic activity and spend trillions of dollars attempting to control atmospheric CO₂, the measurements and assumptions supporting those decisions deserve the closest possible scrutiny.
Dr. Willie Soon’s chapter, “Global Warming, Urban Heat Islands, and the Sun” appears as Chapter 11 of Canary in a Climate World: Climate Realism vs. the Net Zero Myth.
The book brings together 38 contributors examining climate science, energy policy and the assumptions behind ‘net zero’.
Read John Robson’s complete written critique at Climate Discussion Nexus.
See more here substack.com
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