Jennifer Marohasy

BIG things are happening Sun-wise.  The longer Solar Cycle 24 is delayed, the weaker should it be.  Thus, it is more likely day by day – while Cycle 24 remains in deferral – that we are entering the next Little Ice Age cold period (Landscheidt Minimum1). 

In 2004, NASA predicted an extra-powerful Cycle 24 starting in 2006, far stronger than modest Cycle 23 – thus supplementing IPCC’s projected people-driven warming.  As you might expect, there are very few people outside the ‘mainstream’ consensus policed by Royal Society, IPCC, NASA – and propagated by the great journals Science and Nature – with the expertise to challenge NASA on this esoteric topic. But happily, there are some. 

The collective angular momentum of the giant outer planets drives the Sun’s highly-irregular orbit about the centre-of-mass of the solar system (as Newton knew); and the timing (albeit, not yet the magnitude) of consequential solar variability can therefore be predicted.  By “variability” I don’t mean in total solar irradiance; because TSI varies only by fractions of a percent.  I am referring to the outflow of magnetised plasma from the Sun – which can vary by orders of magnitude at timings from quotidian to millennial.  

Sadly – and surprisingly – scientists are herd-animals.  They revere consensus; and hence, fight like tigers to protect the dominant scientific paradigm from new and threatening ideas.  For instance, Landscheidt first sent the draft of his ground-breaking paper to Nature, where it was rejected as “of insufficient general interest”- without even going out for peer-review.  Hence, I was delighted when a ‘Mainstream’ source (Livingston & Penn, National Solar Observatory at Tucson Arizona – link follows) provided an observation-based analysis – not just another computer-simulation – accepting the concept of a 300-year warming-trend from the “quiet Sun” of the deadly Maunder Minimum cold period, to the “hyperactive Sun” of the benign Modern Era warm period.  Crucially, this (beneficial) warming – blamed by climatologists on people – appears over.

Of course, no-one KNOWS whether the world will warm or cool during coming decades.  However, the longer the Sun stays asleep now, the more likely it becomes that the decade of gentle cooling since 1998 will continue – and worsen.  Surely, therefore, it is too early for policy-makers to “pick winners”.  If indeed the world does enter another Little Ice Age cold period, the people-driven-warming beat-up will be over-trumped by a far more serious problem – external influences beyond our control, leading to global cooling.  World food-production would be endangered.

Clearly, Australia’s policy-makers deserve a broader spectrum of advice than the dogmatic and self-serving promotion by CSIRO and Met Bureau of the implausible hypothesis that people are the primary driver of global climate – with only more and more warming ahead.

Bob Foster
fosbob AT bigpond.com

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 Theodor Landscheidt 2003, “New Little Ice Age instead of global warming?”, Energy & Environment v.14 no.2&3, pp.327-50.  See: http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/Calen/Landscheidt-1.html