It’s the Sun, Stupid!
Viv Forbes -January 21, 2016
Please feel free to publish, forward, post or quote from this.
Those who think the political war on carbon will lower Earths temperature or keep climate stable need to study climate history.
Temperatures on Earth dance to a cyclic rhythm every hour, every day, every month, every season, every year, and to every beat of the sun-spot and glacial cycles.
The daily solar cycle causes continual changes in temperature for every spot on Earth. It produces the frosts at dawn, the mid-day heat and the cooling at sunset. It is regulated by rotation of the Earth.
Superimposed on the daily solar cycle is the monthly lunar cycle, driven by the orbit of the Moon around the Earth. These two cycles interact to produce variations in atmospheric pressure and tides, and currents in the oceans and the atmosphere. These are the daily weather makers.
The yearly seasonal cycle is caused as the tilted axis of Earths rotation affects the intensity of solar energy received by each hemisphere. This produces spring, summer, autumn and winter for every spot on Earth.
Then there is the 22 year sun-spot cycle, which correlates with cycles of floods and droughts. Sunspot cycles are indicators of solar activity which causes periods of global warming and cooling.
Original Research on Sunspots and Rainfall Cycles Prof Will Alexander:
http://carbon-sense.com/2008/05/26/alexander-2008/
Variations on the sun also affect the intensity of cosmic rays reaching Earths surface cosmic rays create nuclei for low level cloud formation, and the shading from such clouds reduces surface temperatures.
See: http://www.globalwarming-sowhat.com/warm–cool-/cosmic-rays–clouds-0500.pdf
Earths climate is also disrupted periodically by the effects of changing winds, ocean hot spots and submarine volcanism that produce the El Nino Southern Oscillation.
The least recognized but most dangerous climate cycle is the glacial cycle. We are fortunate to live in the Holocene Epoch, the latest warm phase of the Pleistocene Ice Age. The climate history of the Holocene, and its predecessor the Eemian, are well documented in ice core logs and other records in the rocks. Each cycle consists of a glacial age of about 80,000 years followed by a warmer age of about 20,000 years, with the peak warming occurring over about 12,000 years. Our modern warm era commenced 12,000 years ago and peaked during the Medieval Warming, so it is probably nearing its end.
The Holocene Warmth as revealed by the Greenland Ice Cores:
http://carbon-sense.com/2009/10/03/climate-always-changing/
The Eemian Warm Period was warmer than today:
http://www.nbi.ku.dk/english/news/news13/greenland-ice-cores-reveal-warm-climate-of-the-past/
There have been eight warm eras separated by long glacial winters over the last 800,000 years of the Pleistocene. In every beat of this cycle, the vast ice sheets melt, sea levels rise dramatically, coral reefs and coastal settlements are drowned, and forests and animals re-colonise the higher land released from the ice. Warm climate animals such as hippos, water buffaloes and elephants got as far north as Germany in the last warm era. Then suddenly the ice returned, covering the northern hemisphere as far south as Chicago and London, destroying the forests, lowering the seas, stranding the relocated coral reefs and eliminating unprepared species.
This regular repetition of natural climate change is partially explained by the Milankovitch cycles relating to changes in Earths precession, orbit and tilt. These drive variations in solar energy received by Earth and have the greatest temperature effect on the large land masses of the Northern Hemisphere.
On an even longer time scale, oscillation of the solar system through the plane of the Galaxy seems to trigger magnetic reversals and violent spasms of volcanism, crustal movements, glaciation and species extinction. Earth is never still for long.
These cycles interact to produce a wide range of ever-changing temperatures. Even at the same moment, temperatures vary dramatically from the equator to the poles and from the surface to the stratosphere. For would-be climate managers to claim they can calculate a mythical global temperature with precision greater than thermometers can measure is statistical nonsense.
It is a wonder of the modern era that people who cannot accurately forecast next weekends weather claim they can regulate the temperature of the whole globe by bashing industry and taxing carbon.
What is the role of carbon dioxide in climate? Al Gore did a great job to dramatise the recurring glacial cycles in his widely acclaimed work of science fiction. But he missed two inconvenient truths.
First, ice cores show that in the glacial spring-time the temperature rose BEFORE the CO2 levels rose. Therefore the rising CO2 cannot be a CAUSE of the warming it is a RESULT of CO2 being expelled from the warming oceans.
Second, at the top of every summer-time in the glacial cycle, the high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere were unable to prevent the cooling into the next cycle of ice.
We are already in the autumn of the current glacial cycle and nothing man can do will change that. Global temperatures today are lower than they were in Roman and Medieval times. They will still fluctuate with the effects of daily, lunar, yearly and sun-spot cycles, but the long-term trend of maximum and minimum temperatures will continue drifting downwards. Once summer temperatures in places like Siberia are unable to melt last winters snow, the already growing glaciers will join to form ice sheets and Earth will once again be gripped by another long Glacial Winter.
The transition from Greenhouse Earth to Icehouse Earth always occurs suddenly. Once our verdant greenhouse is gone, life on Earth will never be the same again. Greenhouse Earth will surely come around again, but many of todays species will probably not survive to welcome the return of the warmth.
The warm days, seasons, years and epochs have never been a deadly threat to life on Earth. Frost, snow, hail and ice are the killers. If our descendants do not have the energy, resources and wisdom to keep their people warm and fed through the coming glacial epoch, humans may follow our Neanderthal cousins who perished in the last glacial winter, just 20,000 years ago.
There is NO evidence in climate history that carbon dioxide has a detectable effect on global temperatures. However if our continued use of cheap reliable hydro-carbon energy does slightly delay the onset of the next glacial winter, we and all life on Earth should count ourselves extremely lucky.
Viv Forbes,
19 Jan 2016
Viv Forbes is a qualified geologist who has spent much of his life studying geological and climate history as written in the rocks. He has also studied physics, chemistry, hydrology, climatology, economics and financial analysis. He is the Founder of the Carbon Sense Coalition and a non-executive director of a small Australian company developing a coking coal mine.
Further Reading:
By far the best reference book I have read on the above subjects is:
The Inconvenient Skeptic by John Kehr. This book is written in plain language, but full of sound science, well researched and referenced. I highly recommend it for those wishing to understand what drives our climate. (Hint: It is NOT carbon Dioxide.)
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/the-book/
Another well-researched and easy-reading book on the longer term cycles of ice ages and volcanism is:
Not by Fire, but by Ice by Robert Felix:
Here is a Forecaster using Sun and Moon Cycles:
Private long range weather forecaster, Ken Ring, uses the orbits of Sun and Moon, which combine to affect weather cycles. Ken Ring’s Australia Weather Almanac for 2016 contains 450-pages of isobaric maps, rain tables, regional summaries, temperature trends and daily estimated weather conditions for all major cities and States. There are estimations of floods, frosts, hail, storms, snow and dust, and state summaries for year and season. Here is Kens comment on the state of weather forecasting today:
http://www.predictweather.co.nz/ArticleShow.aspx?ID=257&type=home
The Australia Weather Almanac for 2016 is available here, and the 272-page Extreme Events Table Diaries from here
You want EVIDENCE??
The cat got out of the bag at Paris, when the Tuvalu Prime Minister Mr Sopoaga roundly criticised demands for him to provide robust scientific evidence to show Tuvalu was a victim of climate change.
Why should governments of any of the non-sinking islands of the Pacific or the Maldives present any facts when billions of dollars may be gifted to them for a non-existent problem?
Sea level records from the 1970s to the present, from the highly regarded Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level, show little or no sea level rise for either Tuvalu or Kiribati. Even the Government of New Zealand cannot fill its allocation of 75 places for climate refugees.
This reluctance to face scientific fact and observation is typical of climate alarmism, and reveals the entire Paris conference to be just another exercise in the redistribution of billions of dollars in what is a scientific fraud of massive proportions.
Geoff Derrick
Brisbane.
An Inconvenient Anniversary
Thanks to Albert Parker and Cliff Ollier for this timely reminder:
Not too many will remember, but 10 years ago Al Gore presented the alarmist movie “The Inconvenient Truth”. After 10 years, the temperatures are pretty much the same, the sea levels are pretty much the same, the sea ices are pretty much the same, and the number of polar bears is pretty much the same (apart from the few who die by laughing while watching the movie) – it seems in terms of horse racing that the horse suggested by Al Gore is still sleeping on the starting line.
See: http://edberry.com/blog/ed-berry/today-is-al-gores-global-warming-doomsday/
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