Bob Foster, member of the Lavoisier Group and reader of this blog, claims the sun drives climate and the next little ice age will be in 2030.
Following is an edited and illustrated extract from a longer piece at Warwick Hughes’ blog, click here.
“The Sun is the primary long-term driver of climate. Solar activity can be predicted, and if the Sun keeps playing by the rules, the next Little Ice Age cold period will be fully developed by 2030, Figure 1.
(from Theodor Landscheidt 2003, New little Ice Age instead of global warming, Energy & Environment v. 14 no 2,3 pp.327-50. The paper is available at http://bourabai.narod.ru/landscheidt/new-e.htm )
Variable upwelling of cold water in the equatorial eastern Pacific is the primary driver of climate at the decadal level. Inflection points in the length-of-day (LOD) trend correlate with regime changes to more or less cold-water upwelling, and LOD trend reversals correlate with planetary inertial forcing of the Sun, Figure 2.
(from Theodor Landscheidt )
This second graph shows the relationship between inflection points in the LOD trend and zero phases in the rotary force applied by the giant outer (Jovian) planets to the Sun.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The LOD stuff has no plausible physical basis and will go the same way as the Solar Cycle Length http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/DamonLaut2004.pdf
. Strange that this discredited work features heavily in the E&E paper (Figure 4).
This work is not peer reviewed and if true would entitle the authors to a Nobel prize in physics. One simple question is if global temperatures are strongly linked (forced by) the Gleissberg 80 year cycle where is the cross spectral analysis showing a peak?
Some articles on Peer review and censorship in science is available in the latest NCGT news No 38 here: http://fgserv7747.fastmail.com.au/ncgt38(mar06).pdf
The paper by Leybourne et al indeed postulates a teleconnection between the earth and sun on different geophysical parameters than the one proposed by Bob Foster.
And then the plasma physcists and cosmologists can show further very plausible bases for Bob’s and Landscheit’s ideas.
Mainstream science concerns itself with dark matter (never observed), black holes, (never observed), magnetic fields in the absence of electric currents (an impossibility) so the argument that there is no plasuible physical basis relies on the assumption that the only force in the cosmos is gravity.
Grave error.
Bob – write it up and submit it to the scientific community where it can be properly analysed.
Ender and David, Are you not prepared to consider the sun as a source of warming?
Bob, How do changes in the sun’s radiation vary with global temperature?
Bob, what about increasingly levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – do you think this will have any effect on temperature? … what appart from the sun do you think impacts on climate?
Of course the sun contributes to global climate variability but over the last 50 years the contribution has been very slight and greatly exceeded by the radiative forcing from greenhouse gases. The raditive forcing from the sun is summarised by the IPCC in the figure here – http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/fig6-8.htm
David,
I’ve looked at the graphs. Can you translate this into degrees? For example, how much of the 0.6 degree warming over the last 30 years could be from the sun?
Dennis – the sun is the source of the warming. We are increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere which is trapping more of the suns heat.
The question is whether solar variability is enough to account for recent warming and the answer is no.
>I’ve looked at the graphs. Can you translate this into degrees? For example, how much of the 0.6 degree warming over the last 30 years could be from the sun?
Our “best” estimate is that each 1W/M^2 translates into an equlibrium warming of about 0.7C (with a range of about 0.5 to 1.0C). Oceans dampen or slow the response, so typically it takes some decades for the climate system to fully adjust to a forcing (this is what people are refering to when they talk about unavoidable climate change).
You can see this most obviously with volcanic eruptions which trigger a massive radiative imbalance, but with a dampened temperature response as the forcing is too short lived to appreciably cool the ocean/atmosphere as a whole. This lag means that temperature changes tend to lag and be smoothed versions of the radiation changes. It also means that about 0.5C of global warming attributable to the enhanced greenhouse effect is still to appear.
Based on all this, the best estimate is that the sun and volcanism combined has contributed a small cooling over the last 50 years. Any hypothesis which suggests that the slight solar variations could have triggered a large warming fall down completely as they require unrealistic and quite extreme climate feedbacks. They would also imply extreme sensitivity to greenhouse gas changes.
David
Jennifer, The last IPCC Assessment report presented the estimated relative magnitudes of radiative forcing from different sources SINCE 1750 (not the last 30 years) in Figure 3 of the Summary for Policymakers, which is at the bottom of the page at http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/006.htm .
The estimated solar forcing is shown in the bar on the extreme right. The most striking feature of the chart is the huge uncertainty band for the indirect effect of aerosols, which at the year 2000 ranged from nil to a negative forcing which is greater than the positive forcing from CO2.
This raises a difficulty that has been bugging me. Perhaps David or another expert can explain the following apparent contradiction.
The climateprediction.net group announcement of the error recently found in the input file being used in the experiment said:
‘The reason for the reset is that the scientists at Oxford have discovered that one of the input files to the model hasn’t been increasing the amount of sulphate pollution in the atmosphere.. as it should have done. So what you are seeing is the full impact of greenhouse warming not masked as it was in the real world by sulphate pollution.
‘The experiment you have done is still a useful contribution to scientific research, as well as a graphic illustration of how much warmer the world might already be were it not for the global dimming effect.’
As yet the Oxford scientists don’t seem to have disclosed what increases in temperature up until now were being generated as a result of the misspecification in the file, but the first statement said that the simulations were crashing in 2013 so apparently the ‘overheating’ was very substantial.
It seems to follow that the model assumes that the negative forcing which is estimated to result from the indirect effects of the sulphate pollution now incorporated in the reset model is substantial relative to the positive forcing from the well-mixed greenhouse gases. Unless this is the case, the over-heating would not be eliminated as a result of the correction to the file. But note the ‘very low’ level of understanding of these indirect effects as stated in Figure 3 of the SPM.
But let’s take the argument a stage further. If it is necessary to assume that there is a high negative forcing from sulphate aerosols in order to generate early 21st century temperatures that correspond with observations, which is presumably what the corrected file aims to do, then the REDUCTION in sulphate pollution that can be expected to occur in the 21st century should give rise to a substantial positive forcing (the negative of a negative is a positive) and concomitant increase in temperature.
The extreme example of this is the B1T MESSAGE scenario, which projects a reduction of more than 80% in emissions of sulphur oxides between 2000 and 2100 (SRES, p. 426). Yet this is the scenario which, according to the paper presented by Dr. Tom Wigley to the IPCC Expert Meeting on Emissions Scenarios at Amsterdam on 8 January 2003, was the extreme scenario (at the low end) ‘in terms of the 2100 forcing pattern.’ It is presumably the scenario that projects a 1.4 deg. C increase in temperature between 1990 and 2100 (1.25 deg. C between 2000 and 2100) according to one of the models used by the IPCC in the simple model projections.
Suppose for argument’s sake that, as of the year 2000, global mean temperature would have been 1 deg. C higher than it in fact was as a result of the masking effect of sulphate pollution. Then, if the sulphur oxides series in the B1T MESSAGE is representative of sulphate pollution, and if reductions in this form of pollution are quickly reflected in higher temperatures (as I understand is the case), then the global mean temperature would rise in the 20th century under the B1T MESSAGE scenario by around 0.8 deg. C as a result of the reduction in this pollution alone.
I won’t push the arithmetic further because it seems that I must be overlooking something. Essentially my questions are: if sulphate pollution has masked substantial temperature increases that would otherwise have occurred, should this effect not be unwound as sulphate pollution falls? So why doesn’t this show up in larger temperature increases in the low IPCC emissions scenarios?
David, Thanks for your reply to Jennifer’s question, which I saw after posting the above. I think I’m raising a different issue, which however bears on the point made in your last sentence.
Science has continued to evolve, as it should, since IPCC TAR.
One of the best examples of natural (solar as well as volcanic impacts) on global temperature vs observed global temperature is the work of Meehl et al (2004) http://www.bom.gov.au/bmrc/clfor/cfstaff/jma/meehl_additivity.pdf.
Their paper (see fig. 2d) shows that only through including both observed natural and anthropogenic forcings do you get a global temperature change as observed over the past century.
Their figure 2d also shows the large difference between using all forcings (natural and anthropogenic) and just using natural (Solar and Volcanic) forcings alone.
Its very nice work.
Corrected link
http://www.bom.gov.au/bmrc/clfor/cfstaff/jma/meehl_additivity.pdf
ABW, The link you gave takes me to the Bureau of Meteorology but not to the Meehl et al paper.
By the way, your statement on the earlier thread that The “scientists thought it was cooling in the 70’s” myth is WELL COVERED by Realclimate’ (EMPHASIS added) is wrong. It is Realclimate which is creating a myth: they don’t so much as mention the survey results which I’d cited, which provide strong evidence that the climate science community of the mid-1970s thought that global cooling was just as probable as global warming in the last quarter of the 20th century.
The following is an extract from the Global 2000 Report, which President Jimmy Carter discussed with the heads of industrialised nations at the 1980 economic summit in Venice even before it was released.
Following the release, the President directed the State Department to raise this Report in every appropriate international forum, and the State Department in turn directed US embassies abroad to bring the Study to the attention of appropriate officials in foreign governments. This is from the Chapter on ‘Water Projections and the Environment’:
‘The Global 2000 Study’s climate projections provide little guidance, however, because of disagreement among climatologists on future trends.. The experts are more or less evenly divided over the prospects for warming or cooling, and most felt that the highest probability was for no change.. In short there is much uncertainty about future global climate because of the present lack of agreement on causes, effects and trends.’
The study of the opinions of climate scientists was conducted by the National Defense University and was sponsored jointly by the US Department of Defense, the US Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It was validated in a review process involving members of the project staff and climatologists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research at Boulder, Colorado.
How could the RealClimate scientists, writing in 2005, know better what scientists believed in the late 1970s than the scientists who participated in this study?
There’s a paper due out this year claiming a new Maunder Minimum type period starting around 2015.
Is that the famous astrologer, Theodor Landscheidt Foster is quoting?
It is, but there are others such as, Hong et al:
Response of climate to solar forcing recorded in a 6000-year d 18 O time-series of Chinese peat cellulose
Authors: Hong Y.T.1; Jiang H.B.1; Liu T.S.2; Qin X.G.2; Zhou L.P.3; Beer J.4; Li H.D.5; Leng X.T.5
The Holocene, Volume 10, Number 1, 1 January 2000, pp. 1-7(7)
Holocene comments and reply
Authors: Fairbridge R.W.; Oldfield F.; Hong Y.T.
The Holocene, Volume 11, Number 1, 1 January 2001, pp. 121-125(5)
and Charvátová:
Charvatova, I., 1994a. Solar-terrestrial and Climatic Variability during Recent Millenia in Relation to Solar Inertial Motion, Journal of Coastal Research, special issue No. 17 (Holocene Cyclic Pulses and Sedimentation), 72-83.
Charvatova, I., 1994b. Volcanic Activity since 1600 in Possible Relation to Solar Inertial Motion, In: Contemporary Climatology (Ed. by R. Brazdil and M. Kolar), Brno, August 15-19th, 1994, 130-135.
Charvatova, I., 1994c. Repeating Behaviour of Solar and Volcanic Activities in the Ordered Intervals of Solar Inertial Motion, In: Proc. of Workshop PAGES: Manifestations of Climate at the Earth’s Surface at the End of the Holocene (Eds. E. Ruzickova and A. Zeman), Kolin, October 13-14th, 1994, (in press).
Charvatova, I. & Strestik, J. , 1994a. Contribution of long-term natural changes to the recent global warming. Proc. of the Scientific Conference ” Contemporary Climatic Changes “, Szczecin, May-June 1993.
Charvatova, I. & Strestik, J., 1994b. The Solar Systemic Features in ST-phenomena and Surface Air Temperature during the Last Centuries, In: Contemporary Climatology (Ed. by R. Brazdil and M. Kolar), Brno, August 15-19th, 1994, p. 136-141.
Charvatova, I. & Strestik J., 1994c. Variability of Periodicity Pattern within 7 and 15 years in Solar-terrestrial Phenomena and in Surface Air Temperature during the Last Three Centuries, In: Scientific Activities of Prof. Gorczynski and their Continuation, Torun, Poland, p. 30-32.
Charvatova, I. & Strestik J., 1995. Long-term Changes of the Surface Air Temperature in Relation to Solar Inertial Motion, Climatic Change, (in press).
Can origin of the 2400-year cycle of solar activity be caused by solar inertial motion?
I. Charvátová
Annales Geophysicae, Vol. 18, pp 399-405, 2000
Charvátová I. and Střeštík J., 2004. Periodicities between 6−16 years in surface air temperature in possible relation to solar inertial motion. J. Atmos. Sol-Terr. Phys., 66, 219-227.
Ian – since the precise point of the RC post is to point out that scientists were indeed not sure, in the 70’s, which way climate was headed, you seem to be in a bizarre violent agreement with me. Still, I suppose its better than having nothing to say. Nowadays, of course, there is virtual unanimity on warming.
Apart from the astrologers, of course.
Reply to Ian Castles’ post re Myth of Global Cooling in the ’70s.
I am interested in the state of the debate in the 1970s and am not sure what your real point is here, Ian. When this subject was raised at RealClimate it was to counter the myth that “we shouldn’t believe global warming predictions now, because in the 1970’s (the preponderance of scientists) were predicting an (imminent) ice age and/or cooling” (my editing). The author further limits the discussion by stating:
“I should clarify that I’m talking about predictions in the scientific press. There were some regrettable things published in the popular press … But we’re only responsible for the scientific press.”
Although the post does diverge from a discussion of scientific papers somewhat with mention of 1975 NAS/NRC report I don’t see that the article at RealClimate was biased in any way and nor would it have, given the above focus of the discussion, have benefited from reference to the rather ambiguous wording of Global 2000 Study.
Astrologers?
Yes every newspaper on the planet contains a section on astrology – so it shows what the non-elite seem to care about since newspapers do pander to the masses after all – but Quiggin, your comment is just plain mean spirited.
I expect Tim Blair and the others will pick up on that on their blogs.
William, I welcome your violent agreement with me that ‘scientists were indeed not sure, in the 70’s, which way climate was headed.’
Perhaps you had not realised that my point was made in response to David’s claim that ‘sceptics’ had had 100 years to put forward a credible alternative to the ‘simple result of 100 years of science’, and his rhetorical question ‘do they need another 100?’
And that ABW had brought RealClimate into the discussion with the assertion that ‘The “scientists thought it was cooling in the 70’s” myth is well covered by Realclimate.’
And that Ender had asserted that, 20 or 30 years ago, ‘scientists’ fought ‘the establishment’ for acceptence of AGW.
If you agree that the scientists who believed in GW (or maybe even AGW) 30 years ago were not fighting ‘the establishment’ but an equally large group of scientists who held the contrary view, that’s fine: I hope David and Ender have received your message.
If you agree that it was not a myth that scientists in the 1970s expected cooling in the rest of the century, but was a view that was held no less strongly than the belief in global warming, that’s fine too: I hope ABW has received your message.
The RealClimate posting of January 2005 referred to the ‘trend of cooling from the 40’s to the 70’s’ and argued, citing one source, that ‘people’ were well aware that extrapolating such a short trend was a mistake. But many of those surveyed were not well aware of this. The description of the ‘Large cooling scenario’ in the National Defense University study of 1978 began as follows:
‘The global trend that began in the 1940s accelerated rapidly in the last quarter of the 20th century. The average global temperature reached its lowest value of the past century a few years before the century ended. By the year 2000, the mean Northern Hemisphere temperature was about 0.6 deg. C colder than in the early 1970s, and climate conditions showed a striking similar to the period around 1820. Climatologists explained this large global cooling in terms of natural climatic cycles, partly solar induced and partly to several major volcanic eruptions that occurred between 1980 and 2000’ (Quoted in Global 2000, vol. 2, p. 52).
The description of the ‘Moderate cooling scenario’ said that the global cooling trend ‘continued’ rather than ‘accelerated rapidly’, but for this scenario also ‘Climatologists explained this trend principally in terms of a natural cooling cycle, moderated by the warming effects of increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.’
I hope that this helps to explain the context in which my comments were made, Ian K. I accept that the article in RealClimate was not biased, but it has been repeatedly quoted, including on this blog, in support of the view that believers in global cooling were a tiny minority.
You describe the wording in Global 2000 as ‘ambiguous’, but it was strong enough to blunt the opposition that would otherwise have been expressed to the decisions by the industrialised countries to promote a massive expansion in coal production after the 1979 oil shock.
Paul B, Charvatova & Strestik certainly seem keen on cycles, but the periodicity is all over the place, and never consistent with the observed pattern either for the 20th century or for the last 1000 years. 6-16 years is too short, given that we’ve observed warming for the last 100 years (with an intermediate cycle of 30 years or so) and 2400 years is too long to be interesting in this context.
Ian Castle’s last sentence seems intresting – “the industrialised countries to promote a massive expansion in coal production after the 1979 oil shock”.
Increase in coal production ? Hmm, need to consult the Raff Report on this.
John Q – yes, you are right – I’ve never managed to find much of a future climate forcast from
Charvatova. The Hong paper and the reply from Fairbridge is interesting.
Astrology and Astronomy have something in common – planetary alignments.
There may also be a link between astrology and climate models – you will meet a tall, dark handsome stranger, and the earth will warm by X degrees C.
Paul Biggs some of the quote look very funny indeed such as “Charvatova, I. & Strestik J., 1995. Long-term Changes of the Surface Air Temperature in Relation to Solar Inertial Motion, Climatic Change, (in press).” One might have expected it to have come out by now? One thing that is common to many “solar cycle-climate papers” is that they do not make it into the climate literature, because they just don’t stack up to careful scientific analysis. They are invariably plagued with issues of overfitting, multiplicity, and the physics linking current warming to solar activity just doesn’t stack up. As I mentioned before, if the very slight solar variability over the last 50 years (essentially zero) can lead to 0.6C of warming, then there must be extraordinary feedbacks in the climate system (which we do not see). They also mean extreme sensitivity to greenhouse gas forcing.
Ultimately the solar advocates can’t have it both ways – if a very small solar pertubation can trigger feedbacks which give rise to large warming, then why won’t those same feedbacks operate under the enhanced greenhouse effect.
You also have the pesky problem of where the energy recycled by the enhancement of the greenhouse effect has gone over the last 50 years.
David
A few points, of which the most important is that IPCC has put the Sun’s influence in the conceptual straight-jacket of total solar irradiance – which varies only by fractions of a percent. This, plus volcanic cooling, enables IPCC to show that “natural factors” alone would have meant a cooler world in the last few decades of the 20th century than back in 1860-80. The Sun has been much more active since the 1940s than at any time since the Maunder Minimum “Quiet Sun” of 1645-1715. I mean eruptive activity – the widely variable outflow of charged particles – not irradiance. (As a consequence the primary solar driver is likely to be magnetic.) This 300-yr warming trend has overprinted on it the multi-decadal variation in upwelling of cold water in the equatorial eastern Pacific. The cooling from the mid-40s was reversed by the abrupt curtailment of upwelling at the Great Pacific Climate Shift of 76/7 – the most prominent climatic event of the century. These inertial events are also solar-related, and we are within one/two years of the next reversal. Shorter term, solar magnetic polarity has a ca. 22-yr (Hale)cycle, which influences cloudiness et al. Decreased cloudiness between mid 80s and late 90s, has increased forcing at Earth’s surface from a little-varying irradiance by about 5-10 Watts/sq m. IPCC tells us that since the industrial revolution human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have increased forcing by 2.4 W/sq m. I could go on, but I hope you agree that IPCC’s assertion of an unchanging preindustrial climate (the 900-year handle of its hockey-stick) disturbed only now by people burning fossil fuels (100-yr blade) is at the very least overly simplistic. IPCC’s fixation with a people-driven climate – to the virtual exclusion of an eminently-plausible contributor (I say mostly, alternative) in the Sun – is incurious science taken to the extreme.
Greenhouse warming of the atmosphere has been directly observed. Haries et al., (1991) showed significant changes in the spectra of CH4, CO2, O3 and CFC-11 and CFC-12 between 1970 and 1997. See:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/full/410355a0_fs.html
This result has not been disputed in any peer reviewed journal.
I also refer you again to Meehl et al (2004) shows large differences between using all forcings (natural and anthropogenic) and just using natural (Solar and Volcanic) forcings alone. http://www.bom.gov.au/bmrc/clfor/cfstaff/jma/meehl_additivity.pdf
Again a result which has not been disputed in any peer reviewed journal.
The political debate would go away, a scientific debate would erupt in ernest.
Ian – “I accept that the article in RealClimate was not biased, but it has been repeatedly quoted, including on this blog, in support of the view that believers in global cooling were a tiny minority.”
I have never claimed that scientists that believed in global cooling were in a minority. What I did say that there was not the strong consensus then, one way or the other. In 1970 there was still a lot of work to be done to acheive the consensus of today where the overwhelming majority of climate scientists accept the idea of AGW.
fosbob – “IPCC’s fixation with a people-driven climate – to the virtual exclusion of an eminently-plausible contributor (I say mostly, alternative) in the Sun – is incurious science taken to the extreme.”
You can easily reverse this to summerise your own position like:
Climate change skeptics fixation with a sun driven climate to the virtual exclusion of an eminently-plausible contributor in the human produced greenhouse gases – is incurious science taken to the extreme.”
My apologies – the Harries et al (2001) paper doesnt appear to be available to those without e-subscriptions to Nature.
The abstract is publicly available from:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0_fs.html
Summary: Changes in the spectra have occured in the frequencies corresponding to known greenhouse gases, and hence we have directly observed the enhanced greenhouse effect.
E subs to nature are either Guvmint or corporate – ABW you have blown it.
Bob, the IPCC can only review the science that is avaliable in the peer reviewed science literature. Your suggestion that the hypothesis that warming is driven by greenhouse gases is based on a incorrect hockey stick does not stack up because the link was made very clear in the SAR and the Hockey Stick was not published intil the TAR.
Until such time as you consolidate your ideas, come up with a mechanisms which allows the accumulation of massive amounts of heat energy in the cryosphere, ocean, and atmosphere as we have since in recent decades (your current theory breaks the first law of thermodynamics), and get this published the IPCC reviews cannot and should not countenance your views.
David
David. Solar Inertial Motion is related to solar eruptivity, rather than the solar constant.
As for feedbacks, the postive feedback for CO2 through water vapour suffered a bit of a blow very recently:
The new GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS paper by Thomas M. Smith, Xungang Yin and Arnold Gruber is entitled “Variations in annual global precipitation (1979–2004), based on the Global Precipitation Climatology Project 2.5° analysis”,
with the abstract,
“The Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) has produced a combined satellite and in situ global precipitation estimate, beginning 1979. The annual average GPCP estimates are here analyzed over 1979–2004 to evaluate the large-scale variability over the period. Data inhomogeneities are evaluated and found to not be responsible for the major variations, including systematic changes over the period. Most variations are associated with El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) episodes. There are also tropical trend-like changes over the period, correlated with interdecadal warming of the tropical SSTs and uncorrelated with ENSO. Trends have spatial variations with both positive and negative values, with a global-average near zero.”
“The study also raises questions on the extent to which water vapor content has increased globally, if the global averaged precipitation has not changed significantly. A positive atmospheric water vapor feedback, in response to an increase in the radiative warming of the well-mixed greenhouse gases, is at the foundation of the IPCC perspective on global warming.”
If I’m reading Bob Foster’s post correctly, he’s saying that the angular momentum of the large planets affects the orbit of the sun around the solar systems centre of mass, depending on how the planets are aligned, this could cause more or less “wobble” of the sun (like a spinning washing machine with the clothes on one side versus evenly distributed).
This affects the earth in two ways;
1. The rate of change of earth’s Length of Day varies as the inertial effects of the sun change.
2. Sunspot activity varies as there is more or less wobble of the sun. More sunspots equals more solar wind equals less clouds equals warmer earth, and vice versa.
We are apparently now coming to a time where earth’s LOD is due to change, and also a time when sunspot activity is due to decrease. Hence, a cooler earth.
Sorry if I’m stating what is obvious to everyone else, but is this an accurate summary of the argument?
It seems to me that this theory has the great advantage of making predictions which can be compared to actual events, unlike the AGW theory, for which there is no observational information.
Paul Williams,
Please do continue the logic you posted above here. Your summation is accurate and precise.
As for Bob Foster’s predictions, I remain ambivalent. For one reason that as climate is defined sensu strictu as a 30 year period, I cannot be here to test that theory.
So Bob, sorry, I cannot support it in my present situation.
Paul Biggs, Thanks for posting the abstract of GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS paper by Thomas M. Smith et al which was published on 18 March.
However, the last paragraph of your post does not appear to be part of the abstract of the published paper. Can you provide a source for this paragraph, please?
>David. Solar Inertial Motion is related to solar eruptivity, rather than the solar constant.
The solar contant measures the total radiative energy emitted by the sun. If it is not energy from the sun which is causing the warming, what is it? At the moment these various ideas look like nothing more than overfitting without a physical model to support them and break the first law of thermodynamics – we are getting warming for nothing. Looking for solar-climate cycles is nothing new, it just that the mainstream pretty much gave up decades ago because the relationships are just not there or too subtle to be of value. I would love to see a spectral analysis of global temperature which shows nice spectral peaks.
David
One of the other extra-terrestrial causes of climate change that has been discussed recently is the motion of the Solar System through the galaxy. This is a longer term cycle of course (about 60,000 years), and acts through the variation in the incidence of cloud-seeding cosmic rays as we move in and out of the galaxy disc.
Unintentionally hilarious article on the effect of solar variation on climate here: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/solar.htm.
Money-quote from summary: “minor solar variations could indeed have been partly responsible for some past fluctuations… but future warming from the rise in greenhouse gases would far outweigh any solar effects.”
So hypothetical “future warming” trumps actual observations? Is this a science or a religion?
David, you can change the temperature of a room without changing the energy input. Closing the windows so the heater can warm the room is not breaking any laws of thermodynamics, nor is it getting warming for nothing. It’s simply reducing the radiation of energy from the room.
The earth receives solar energy and also contains energy in its core. How that energy is distributed within the various components of the planet, and how it is re-radiated to space determines the climate. And apparently less clouds is like opening the windows of a warm room on a winters night. Nothing to do with changes in the amount of energy from the sun.
Brett_McS – “So hypothetical “future warming” trumps actual observations? Is this a science or a religion?”
All actual observations support the hypothesis of AGW – what are you talking about?
Re; Ian Castles – GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS paper by Thomas M. Smith et al which was published on 18 March
This is what you are looking for:
http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/04/03/new-global-precip-papers-trend-is-zero-or-positive/
“All actual observations support the hypothesis of AGW – what are you talking about?”
The inverse is true! Computer climate models cannot accurately predict the temperatures of periods for which we have actual data! Different models can’t even agree with each other!
The infamous “hockey stick” is a lie.
Omitting all contradictory data is a lie.
Because its proponents absolutely REFUSE to acknowledge contradictory evidence and intentionally omit all data that defies their predetermined results, I am forced to conclude Anthropogenic Global Warming is nothing more than junk-science fabricated to promote a corrupt and perverted agenda. It is no more valid than Intelligent Design.