"Do scientists think that changes in solar irradiance due to the 11-year solar cycle could be strong enough to cause the current change being measured in Earth's climate?
“Sustained changes in solar radiance – that is changes that occur over decades or centuries – could potentially have an effect on Earth's climate system, which is why such information is included, along with a variety of other natural and human-driven influences, in climate models.“
Increasing solar radiation at a time when greenhouse gas concentrations are higher absolutely will cause warming. If it didn’t, the entire basis of anthropogenic global climate change wouldn’t really work. Would the effect be less severe if humans didn’t put tons of greenhouse gas in the air, yes. Would warning still occur without an increase in solar radiation, yes. Do the two together have a greater effect than either alone, yes.
It’s funny to focus on words that talk about “potentially” having an effect while ignoring the known magnitude of this potential. That quote taken out of context leaves you with the impression that these two factors are both significant contributors, or even roughly equivalent, but the reality is that one of those factors is much much larger than the other, and the other is negligible, and I’m sure you know which one is which.
“the Sun's energy output only changes by up to 0.15% over the course of the cycle, less than what would be needed to force the change in climate that we see. Also, scientists have not been able to find convincing evidence that the 11-yr cycle is mirrored in any aspects of the climate beyond the stratosphere – such as surface temperature, rainfall or wind patterns.“
This page states that CO2 is 20% of greenhouse effect
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle/page5...
"Carbon dioxide causes about 20 percent of Earth’s greenhouse effect; water vapor accounts for about 50 percent; and clouds account for 25 percent."
So 1 to 1.2% of sun's energy is CO2 greenhouse effect. So a 10% change in CO2 greenhouse effect is roughly the same amount of energy as the observed change solar cycle output.
tldr; 0.15% of sun's energy output is actually a lot of energy!
> a 10% change in CO2 greenhouse effect is roughly the same amount of energy as the observed change in solar cycle output.
I think your calculation might be mistaken, that number doesn’t make a lot of sense and is not supported by measurements. See Figs 13 & 16 in the following paper for magnitudes of temperature variation attributed to solar cycle variation.
The link you provided summarized the solar cycle’s contribution to warming as “very small”. This paper also notes that the solar cycle’s affect in the last 50 years has been cooling on average, and that recent warming trends are “almost entirely” due to changes in CO2.
Notice how the quote has no certainty (not sure where you got yours from) and how it suggested that there would be an "effect" (not sure where you got the warming from either).
It is a long-running myth in "climate skeptic" circles that we're due for an upcoming maunder minimum in solar activity which will reverse global warming (or cause global cooling).
See, for example, this article from this global-warming-denialist source:
Yes, but a good way to verify climate science is to make surprising predictions and then see how accurate they are.
Climate scientists have made many such predictions starting in the 1970s. Exxon even had scientists in the 80's predicting climate change with surprising accuracy, and then they buried that research because it would hurt their business.
"Do scientists think that changes in solar irradiance due to the 11-year solar cycle could be strong enough to cause the current change being measured in Earth's climate?
In a word, no. "