A Dalton Minimum Repeat is Shaping Up

“I predicted in a paper published in March 2006 that Solar Cycles 24 and 25 would repeat the experience of the Dalton Minimum.”
Why do you believe it will last two cycles or be limited to two cycles? What gives you the impression that it will mimic exactly the Dalton minimum? My gut says “past performance does not indicate future results”. We might be in for one or three weak cycles, I don’t think we quite know. We might be in for 1000 years of weaker activity for all we know. Do we have, other than the Dalton, any documented previous two cycle weak periods?

The sun has probably been spotless on several occasions recently but those doing the counting have been using a large magnifying glass to count every pixel in a desperate attempt to pump-up the numbers. Some would even like to change the system and use the STEREO Behind / STEREO Ahead satellites to count sunspots out of sight of earth; to bump-up the numbers even more.

Well, it is a good article, and your arguments appear sound….
And, at least as far as the repeat of the Dalton Minimum, I agree with your conclusions. However, I sincerely hope that you are wrong about a 2c drop for a few decades, the links between global cooling and grand solar minimums are a bit more tenuous and I am holding out hope that the cooling observed was coincidence or not as severe as what we have in our future. Or maybe CAGW might save us. (That would be funny!)
I believe if there is a 2c drop it could be disaster for humanity especially if the warmies and watermelons get what they want and world governments are blindsided by the cold.

Australia swaps summer for Christmas snow
http://www.france24.com/en/20101220-australia-swaps-summer-christmas-snow

So 2009 and 2010 should have been half a degree C colder than it was around 1970. But they aren’t. How come?

After the obligatory nod to AGW, in his last para, Boris says:
“The question is whether anthropogenic global warming is the exclusive or dominant fact that determines our climate, or whether Corbyn is also right to insist on the role of the Sun. Is it possible that everything we do is dwarfed by the moods of the star that gives life to the world? The Sun is incomparably vaster and more powerful than any work of man. We are forged from a few clods of solar dust. The Sun powers every plant and form of life, and one day the Sun will turn into a red giant and engulf us all. Then it will burn out. Then it will get very nippy indeed.”
Methinks that Boris’ true leanings are more accurately conveyed in this para than the one with the nod.

Robert M says:
December 20, 2010 at 12:46 am
I believe if there is a 2c drop it could be disaster for humanity especially if the warmies and watermelons get what they want and world governments are blindsided by the cold.
I am of the mind that we need to start seeing a significant drop in temperatures for the sake of humanity. For all the damage this would do (crops would suffer, millions would die of starvation and cold-related deaths) it would pale besides the damage our corrupt leaders and the UN would inflict on us. We have already seen deaths from starvation due to tax-subsidised farmers growing biofuel instead of food (pushing food prices through the roof). We have already seen masses of jobs lost as once-free businesses fail to compete with the tax-funded green industry. We have already seen energy bills sky-rocket. We have already seen an entire section of the population – i.e. those who know that scepticism in science is an essential element – stigmatised by our own political representatives as “climate deniers” (Gordon Brown used the term on many occasions during his short, unelected period in office, as does Obama, as do most of the unelected EU, as do most of the unelected UN). We have already seen Government-produced propaganda targeted towards children, designed to scare them and if necessary to turn them against their sceptical parents. This is showing no signs of stopping, despite the complete failure of alarmists to prove their corrupt hypothesis. If anything, the more evidence that mounts against them (i.e. that the recent warming is part of a natural cycle, and is nothing remotely unusual), the more totalitarian they become.
So again, I say bring on the cold.

The prediction is not consistent with the Livingston/Penn forecast. Four years from now the sunspotnumber will be around 10 and cycle 25 will be substantially weaker than cycle 24. Looks much different, more like a Maunder minimum.
But in medio 2011 there will be certainty.

“J.Gommers says:
December 20, 2010 at 2:02 am
The prediction is not consistent with the Livingston/Penn forecast. Four years from now the sunspotnumber will be around 10 and cycle 25 will be substantially weaker than cycle 24. Looks much different, more like a Maunder minimum.
But in medio 2011 there will be certainty.”
Got to agree with you. I don’t think we are looking far enough back for comparisons. Even during the Maunder there were periods of a flurry of activity just to soon fall apart and go quiet again. This was in the period ~1640-1695. That’s the signature we should watch for if this is truly a more severe minimum.

This link was just sent to me… it’s from 2009 and related to Copenhagen failure:
http://benjaminfulford.net/2009/12/21/secret-financial-maneuvers-fail-to-save-copenhagen-climate-summit/

E.M.Smith said (December 20, 2010 at 2:31 am): But you can look at the pictures of what I was looking at today, and think how much more comfy it is to do that from the warm inside rather than going out into it to figure out just how bad it really is…
Is this a message, E, M,?

Thank you David, that is interesting work and it sounds plausible. But earlier on this blog I got blamed for appealing to authority and was encouraged to think for myself, so let’s try some logic on this. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Given that solar activity has been low in recent years and knowing that this gives a cooling effect, but that high average global temperatures have nonetheless been observed (with each subsequent decade being warmer than the previous for the past several decades), can we conclude that carbon-induced global warming has so far been stronger than the cooling effect of low solar activity?
And assuming that solar activity has inadequately been accounted for in climate models, does this imply that the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide on world average temperature may have been underestimated?

David Archibald presents the data and makes cautious predictions and I suspect that, like any good scientist, he can’t wait for the next few years to pass to see if his predictions are valid. If not, he’ll change his interpretation . Well done David, as usual.
I agree with DavidUK that our scientifically illiterate politicians and their completely mad fixation with energy policies, which will potentially destroy economies, are far more of a threat than any climate variation.
Check out the windmill electricity contribution at NETA.

So any lags in global temperature associated with this?
Because where ever you think 2010 global temp is going to finish it’s going to take a stretch to describe it as cool no matter how many personnel reports of it being cold outside. Certainly the UAH satellite data doesn’t seem to have it cool.

Just out of curiosity where does the data from Oberlach Station come from? A google search just keeps coming up with quotes from Wiki. I see the Wiki article refers to Archibald. Any help?

Question to David Archibald: is there any area of weather and/or climate where you and Indigo Jones have insights, observations, knowledge or predictions in common?

David I found you’re paper.
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/solar-cycles/Archibald.pdf
You say compared to 2003 you predicted/expect a drop of 1.5oC by 2020. It’s 2010 now, 7 years after 2003 and 10 years to 2020. How do you think your prediction is holding up?

I endorse the suggestion that Anthony should start a sun page.
As I see matters, we have a lot of data but no one really knows what it means and the extent of its implications. I think that we may have to wait more until 2013/4 to really be sure how the cycles are panning out.
My gut tells me that the sun has a much more influential role on climate than does a trace gas. The power of the sun is truly remarkable and its size and power difficult to comprehend. I can easily accept that there may be behavoiral issues of the sun which we presently do not know about and/or do not understand, especially since the data snap shot is over such a small period. In matters such as this, one has to consider geological time and it is crazy to seek to extrapolate too much from just a 100 years or even a 1000 years of (questionable) data. To add to the problems, it appears that the instrument record has been allowed to become so corrupted that it is patently unreliable such that we do not know for sure what the global temperatures (and how I dislike that concept) were during the last 70 years.
I endorse the comment about the role of the oceans and the importance of their heat reservoir. I have for years been suggesting that we should disregard land temperature details (too unreliable because of urban spread) and simply look at ocean temps. The oceans cover approx 70% of the Earth and unlike land act as heat reservoirs. If the Earth is cooling due to less sun activity, it will take time for the oceans to dumpo their heat and before we feel the full extent of the cooling.
I have never understood why we should be so worried about a 2 deg C increase in temperature. I think that it would be benefical. For the UK it would be wonderful since we would become more like Southern France and perhaps we could replace the Spannish Costas as a tourist destination; heaven knows that the UK needs something to replace all the lost industry over the course of the last 30 years. On the other hand, I consider that a 2 deg C drop in temperature would be a significant problem for the Northern Hemishpere and accross the food basket area of the globe. Man would obviously survive, but it would no doubt result in millions of deaths. I for one would be emigrating from the UK if it were to get colder.
I think that we are living in interesting times and the next 10 years will establish whether there is any merit in the AGW conjecture. I doubt that there is. My concern is that the politicians are rushing around like headless chickens rushing full steam ahead beating the AGW drum and the need to decarbonize the western economies such that untold damage will be done in these next 10 years. What a shame, if only there was a way to hold them personally accountable for the damage they inflict and to reimburse the ordinary citizen for any increased taxes/subsidies levied upon the ordinary citizen.

I’m also interested in the source of the “Oberlach Station in Germany”. I don’t live in Oberlach, but do live in Germany and couldn’t find any reference by internet searching, despite setting the language to German and using different engines. Also, the Wikipedia article doesn’t even have the reference for Dave A’s work, which it references, only a couple of page numbers from it– very confusing.
In general though, thanks for this blog post: very interesting!

Well, if you really want to compare with the Dalton minimum, isn’t it really essential to use data from that period? And compare that data set with the current one? Yet Archibald ends with data sets ranging from 1976, 1966,1930,2006 and then tries to connect it to 1776-1820 ish. Without using and raw data from 1776-1820 other than sunspot observations. Am I the only one who thinks this a bit strange?
What’s needed is a flux measure for those dates in the Dalton or at worst a proxy from ice core data.Then you can compare.
Go back to the data and try again before making predictions based on what at best could be described as a dodgy data set.
This kind of science really gets me because I think that Archibald may have a valid point but it’s rather blunted because the scientific argument isn’t cutting enough, if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphore.
Look at this data set, it goes back 11,000 years, until 50 years before now.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/solar_variability/solanki2004-ssn.txt
Then add the observations made from 1955 until 2010 (using raw data )and then , perhaps then you’ll get an interesting graph. Perhaps one could comment that proxies aren’t as reliable as the 10,7 flux raw data, but it’s the best we’ve got.And that mixing the two data sets is also dodgy. But hey,lets do it any way.
look here
http://cc.oulu.fi/%7Eusoskin/personal/nature02995.pdf
or here
http://www.mps.mpg.de/dokumente/publikationen/solanki/j215.pdf
Run the data through PAST http://www.nhm.uio.no/norges/past/download.html
and paste your graph and hey presto, then, perhaps then you’ve got data you can compare. Then you could look for similarities with the rider ‘the past doesn’t guarantee the present’
Basically the current argument runs like ‘its a Dalton rerun because I say so, because I predicted it'( based on data you can’t take seriously), and that’s just not good enough.
You also forget that most of the Dalton cooling was volcanic, go check the sulphate core records (http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/IVI2/) and compare them for the time span you want to consider . It’s not enough to wag your finger and say ‘Ah but solar minimum causes volcanic eruptions because there is a correlation’. Go prove it.Correlation doesn’t mean cause.
I spend my days telling students how important it is to respect the scientific method, but sometimes when I see this kind of argument, it just looks like pseudoscience. Intreresting, though provoking, bloggable ,but ultimatly dismissable because it lacks vigour.
There’s no null hypothesis, no paper, no findings, no evidence, no method.
Depressingly ,everything here can and will be dismissed, and really that’s a shame because we really need to keep an open mind.

crosspatch says:
December 20, 2010 at 12:16 am
“I predicted in a paper published in March 2006 that Solar Cycles 24 and 25 would repeat the experience of the Dalton Minimum.”
————————–
Why do you believe it will last two cycles or be limited to two cycles? What gives you the impression that it will mimic exactly the Dalton minimum?
Good question, so many getting on the band wagon right now but they do not have a plausible theory as to why. Mike Lockwood today predicted this minimum will last for 200-300 years!
The unnamed minimum we are in now will be weaker than the Dalton, but should last 2 solar cycles before recovering for a few decades and then falling back slightly before beginning an up ramp not unlike the period of the 1920-1960’s. The Dalton had a weak cycle 7 that continued the cold which we will not experience.
How do I know this? It’s a simple method of measuring the angular momentum of the Sun and what we are experiencing now was predicted exactly in 2008 as seen in my 200 year solar prediction, which at the time was shunned by Anthony…..but maybe times have changed?

vukcevic says:
December 20, 2010 at 3:33 am
The opposition to your findings it is perfectly explained by Don Quixote: “Ladran, Sancho, segnal que cabalgamos.” “The dogs are barking, Sancho, it a sign that we are moving. “

Two important indicators point to the fact that we should be cooling – a sun gone to sleep (since ca. 2005-06) and the deepest la nina since 1976. Global temps are still high by all five metrics (NOAA, UAH, RSS, GISS, and HADCRUT). Sea surface temps look like they have bottomed out and may be on the rise again – perhaps another el nino within a year? The head oceanographer of the Navy predicts loss of summer sea ice in the arctic by 2020 (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339475/Global-warming-Sandal-wearers-wont-save-greed-US-Navy-will.html#ixzz18ZccQwjm ).
Will temps continue to rise and ice continue to melt? We’ll know within 5-10 years.

During the Little Ice Age (and all the minima and the Big Ice Ages too) both poles experienced significant sea ice growth. Watch the sea ice global total for global cooling-warming indicators. It’s a kind’a global thermometer thingy-wingy. Atmospheric temperature is OK for any one ‘where’ at any one ‘time’ or from any one year to another year, but you don’t want to write home about it. Watch the sea ice. Watch the glaciers.
PS: In today’s much abused and overpopulated world we’ve lost touch with a number of realities. One very important one is that you never trust a politician any farther than you can throw them. (I don’t think I can say that too often.)

@Sense Seeker
“Solar activity has at best been essentially flat since at least 1980, so the oceans should have caught up by now.”
Yes but it’s been flat at the highest level since record-keeping of sunspots begin in the year 1600.
If you have a constant flame under a pot of cold water the water keeps getting warmer even though the flame remains constant. Duh.

Sense Seeker says:
December 20, 2010 at 4:04 am
Baa,
For the globe to cool, first the oceans must divest themselves of some heat content. The recent El Nino as an example… The heat is passed into the gaseous part of the atmosphere and from there finds its way into space by the often described processes. While that is happening the air temperature must needs be higher than before, perhaps even at record levels. If one understands the source of the heat energy, one will be tempted to ascribe the elevated temperatures to a cooling process. The proof, one way or the other, will depend upon future conditions.
Then there is past correlation to consider. Correlation may not be causation, but that’s the way to bet it. A hypothesis without correlation of some sort to back it up will not fare well. We are in some sort of solar minimum. The oceans are dumping heat content. We can see clearly where it is going, and it’s up. There is high correlation associating Solar events with temperatures. I putting my bets on cold to come. Seems like sense.

HR says:
December 20, 2010 at 3:38 am

David I found you’re paper.
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/solar-cycles/Archibald.pdf
You say compared to 2003 you predicted/expect a drop of 1.5oC by 2020. It’s 2010 now, 7 years after 2003 and 10 years to 2020. How do you think your prediction is holding up?

It’s holding up better than the prediction of children in England not knowing what snow is.
It’s holding up better than the prediction of an ice-free arctic ocean in the summer.
It’s holding up better than the prediction of increasingly powerful Atlantic hurricanes.
But the prediction that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones is holding up best of all.

Casper says:
December 20, 2010 at 12:23 am
It is quite probably that we’ll be seeing a new Dalton Minimum. A global cooling? I’ll bet the man is responsible for it! lol
================================================
NOPE !!!!!!!!!
The natural cooling is just masking the CAGW !!!!
That’s how it gets spun !!

David, UK says:
December 20, 2010 at 1:54 am
“I am of the mind that we need to start seeing a significant drop in temperatures for the sake of humanity. For all the damage this would do (crops would suffer, millions would die of starvation and cold-related deaths) it would pale besides the damage our corrupt leaders and the UN would inflict on us. ”
I hear ya, David. It’s a classic choice between the lesser of two evils. Warming is good. Cooling is bad. Cooling will have worse consequences if resources today are used to formulate plans and build infracstructure for increasing warmth. Calling it “blindsided by cooling” is exactly right. The AGW faithful are about to get bitch-slapped by mother nature and we’re all going to feel the blow.

My main gripe with this article is “the 1970s cooling period”, because the cool period really started some time between 1945 and 1950 and lasted all until 1980. That means that the record strong solar cycle 19 was also well within this cold period, so to me, the conjecture that the “1970s cooling” was connected to the weak cycle 20 doesn’t seem well supported. And: the rapid warming from about 1920-1940 happened during two quite weak solar cycles.

Re Sense Seeker says:
December 20, 2010 at 4:04 am
Seeker, you have to factor in cloud cover and cloud location. What heats the oceans is SWR at the SURFACE. This SWR has a long residence time within our earth’s ocean, land atmosphere. The longer the residence time, the more energy can accumalate.
This led me to some thoughts about the seasons. Sunlight, falling on the Earth when it’s about 3,000,000 miles closer to the sun in January, is about 7% more intense than in July. Because the Northern Hemisphere has more land which heats easier then water most people state that the Earth’s average temperature is about 4 degrees F higher in July than January, when in fact they should be stating that the ATMOSPHERE is 4 degrees higher in July. In January this extra SW energy is being pumped into the oceans where the “residence time” within the Earth’s ocean land and atmosphere is the longest. Some of the energy increases the mean evaporation rate of the earth and is transmitted to latent heat before being released, but most of the extra energy is lost to the atmosphere for a time as it is contained within the ocean, but eventually it is radiated from the ocean as LWR and increased latent heat in water vapor.
In actuality, due to the more intense southern sun’s SW radiation being trapped in the oceans, the earth is gaining energy in the southern hemisphere summers, and losing energy in the northern hemisphere summer. The extra energy is just hidden in the oceans for a time while the northern hemisphere summer reacts on a more sensitive atmosphere, creating a rise in atmospheric heat, but a net loss to the planet relative to the southern hemisphere summer.
At Tallblokes site he has some charts on clould cover as well as TSI. BTW, a flat line at a substained high level can build over time, and the expanisve heating of the oceans over the last several decades correspondes well to a consitently high SWR input at the surface. You need to look not only at the peaks, but the duration of the high periods of TSI, as a smaller peak that continues for a greater period can have an equall or increased effect. AT any rate SWR rules this planets energy balance.

Grey Lensman says:
December 20, 2010 at 6:02 am
…and possibly the Moon sucks off its part too from our Earth.

Pops says:
December 20, 2010 at 12:43 am
The sun has probably been spotless on several occasions recently but those doing the counting have been using a large magnifying glass to count every pixel in a desperate attempt to pump-up the numbers. Some would even like to change the system and use the STEREO Behind / STEREO Ahead satellites to count sunspots out of sight of earth; to bump-up the numbers even more.
Dead right.

Bill Jamison says:
December 20, 2010 at 12:54 am
“Well we’re having a cold FALL, winter is yet to be determined!”
Same here in south central Texas. A few “hard” freezes where that’s defined as below 30 degrees and many mornings with light frost. More than usual for December but so far no really hard freezes yet which for us is dropping down into the teens along with not going above freezing at all for 48 or 72 hours. We don’t get much in the way of snowfall – maybe an inch or two at most that might stick for a couple of days. What we get more often are ice storms where everything gets covered in a half inch of perfectly clear ice.

@ RR Kampen
You should note, looking at the graphs provided in this post, that 1970 was several years into that solar cycle, and past solar maximum. Here in 2010 we have not yet approached maximum. Your comparison is not honest.

HR says:
>>December 20, 2010 at 3:23 am
Just out of curiosity where does the data from Oberlach Station come from? A google search just keeps coming up with quotes from Wiki. I see the Wiki article refers to Archibald. Any help?<<
The reference was vandalised from Wikipedia. I have returned it. It is:
http://climatepolice.com/Solar_Cycles.pdf
See page 5 (pg 33). Mr Archibald, sir, what is the primary data source for these 3 series of temperature readings?? It would be interesting to review them.

Leif says
Quote
Getting facts straight seem to be hard. Magnetic ropes in the solar wind have been recognized for decades, e.g.:
Unquote
Recognised and waffled about is one thing, hard data to show they link to Earth by Themis Imaging is something else. It would be interesting to know exactly what a magnetic rope is. Seems to be a euphemism for electric current. Bit like concrete etched magnetic lines of force, still looking for them.

Sense Seeker says:
December 20, 2010 at 4:04 am
Baa, a lag effect of the oceans is not a very plausible explanation (not to say humbug). Solar activity has at best been essentially flat since at least 1980, so the oceans should have caught up by now….

^^ Clearly a troll. Only someone trying to generate inflamed responses would be so casual as to not bother to define what constitutes “Solar Activity.” For all I know you’re referring to visible solar radiation like many CAGW believers do. If, however, you mean sunspots or F10.7, you’re wrong. But of course being a troll, the conflation of the two is probably what you’re going for.

Fred from Canuckistan says:
December 20, 2010 at 6:06 am
“Shouldn’t we be asking how carbon dioxide causes this lack of sunspots?”
______
Too much CO2 causes the Earth to heat AND cool –but eventually it will boil– and this causes changes in the atmosphere which, in turn, distort human perception much as too much Coors on a hot winter’s night panty raid will also doeth. Anyway that’s the Technical explanation being given to post grads at Hav’erd and, I believe, at every other Ivy Covered Institution for the Preservation of Witchcraft in the Western Hemisphere. It’s NOT that there are less sunspots, there are actually just as many as ever there were or will be, tis that we cannot see them. See? Humans have a very serious alergic reaction to CO2 and eventually go blind when the play with it too much. The Sun doesn’t change, well not at a rate to matter; it’s kind of a constant thing. It’s the CO2 that’s going to kill us. (SarcOff;-)

Pascvaks says:
December 20, 2010 at 5:39 am
“During the Little Ice Age (and all the minima and the Big Ice Ages too) both poles experienced significant sea ice growth. Watch the sea ice global total for global cooling-warming indicators. It’s a kind’a global thermometer thingy-wingy.”
It’s not quite that simple. Heat is transported from tropics to poles by ocean and atmospheric convective currents. Those convective currents can change for reasons largely not understood. If the transport slows for any reason you can get rising temperatures in the tropics and falling temperatures at the poles. The opposite can happen as well if the convective for any reason increase – falling temps in the tropics and rising temps at the poles. To complicate things even more the northern and southern hemispheres have convective currents largely independent of each other so you can get an increase in one hemisphere and a decrease in the other at the same time. Making matters even more complicated is the Atlantic and Pacific have some degree of independence from each other so they aren’t always in sync with each other. Complicating things even more is that the vast majority of the ocean (90%) of it is at a nearly constant 3C and where only a shallow surface layer (first few hundred meters) gets warmer than that. The mixing rate between warm shallow surface and frigid depths, can also change due to changes in trade wind patterns and in the great conveyor belt which transports warm surface water towards the poles where it cools below 3C and sinks to the bottom and where that warm surface water is replaced by cold water flowing along the bottom from polar region to tropical oceans. Complicating things even more are changing gyre currents which are huge eddies which loop off from the main conveyor belt circuit.
The global ocean has over 1000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere and it’s average temperature from top to bottom is scary-cold at 4C which is scary because any change that increases the mix rate between surface and deep waters will make the planet very very cold. The climate is controlled by the global ocean. Weather is controlled by the atmosphere. The sun heats the ocean and the ocean heats the air.
Four degrees C is the average surface temperature of the globe when averaged across both glacial and interglacial epochs of the current ice age. It can be nothing else as over periods of hundreds of thousands of years even the slow mixing rate of shallow and deep ocean waters will average it out and the average air temperature at the surface must eventually follow the temperature of the ocean since the atmosphere has such a tiny thermal mass compared to the ocean.

Here is a comment I have sent to real climate re cold weather and global warming. Awaiting moderation so it may never see the light of day. This seems the closet fit on your topics. If it passes your moderation please feel free to add it.
Gilles/Gavin comments
“It’s difficult for me to understand how one can evaluate the consequences of a global warming, if the local changes are so much unknown. The global consequences are just the sum of local consequences – if they are so many unknown in the local responses of winters, rains, etc.. how can one evaluate any sensible figure ? and more generally, if the LOCAL variance is higher than the long term (which can be true even if the GLOBAL one is not), how can it affect significantly the all day life of people living in some place ?
[Response: It’s difficult for me to understand how one can evaluate the consequences of the Earth’s passage around the sun, if the local changes are so much unknown. The global consequences are just the sum of local consequences – if they are so many unknown in the local responses of seasons, rains, etc.. how can one evaluate any sensible figure ? and more generally, if the LOCAL variance is higher than the seasonal cycle (which can be true even if the GLOBAL one is not), how can it affect significantly the all day life of people living in some place? Indeed, it is truly a mystery. – gavin]”
I love comment 1 and the response as both are so true.
Making a living in a real world on energy policy and project implementation I have learnt that it is essential that we learn to manage uncertainty. In supporting and developing some of the first initiatives responding to the global warming risk in the early ’90s it was good for me to make sensible and concrete progress on the basis of common objectives. But then the predictions of catastrophe got more extreme, and the responses were built on an assumption of certainty. Impacts were extrapolated to fantastical levels (Maldives, polar bears and the rest – both seem to be thriving on the evidence) without any reference to probability or to offsetting benefits. The economics of global warming mitigation have become ridiculous – as the nonsensical uneconomic (wasted resources of the earth and the human race, goddammit) investment in windpower and solar demonstrate.
Mr Cook wonders why the scientists have not explained themselves well. Easy – scare mongering wins politicians but loses the credibility of professionals, and the general public. The CO2 modelling has been around long enough for people to test the predictions – compared with the solar modellers (Corbyn, Sharp) the CO2 modellers are losing. Corbyn and Sharp are beating the professional weather and climate forecasters this year. My previous employer used Corbyn from 1994 because he was even then by some way the most accurate in the medium to long term – and the long term weather becomes the climate.
“Global warming means cold winters and more Antarctic ice” sounds a facile and stupid excuse for failed models in that context even if you believe it to be the truth. If you have a load of missing energy then your model is wrong and you cannot blame sea ice or some other unproven hypothesis. The solar guys acknowledge uncertainty, while uncertainty is a barely disclosed caveat in the CO2 world, to be used as an excuse if necessary.
Oddly, I do not give a fig who is right scientifically – but I want to respond on behalf of clients as to the best (economic, efficient, sustainable in the true sense) way to meet the energy needs of customers – that is, everyone. Working in developing countries as well, I have to recognise that wind and solar are not substitutes for economic energy to deliver economic and social welfare, replacing forests and kerosene as fuel sources.
Where risks are overstated on both impact and probability, you have to ignore them. You follow the best, most accurate predictions, not the politically correct ones. When people in many countries perceive cooling (starting in my case with cold winters in Southern Africa from 2007, and now in Latin America and Central America where people’s perception is mirrored in satellite models – I will not mention the more obvious Northern Hemisphere worries of a cold population paying higher than ever energy bills) they do not like being told it is their fault and due to global warming. Politicians outside the EU and the US are paying lip service to global warming while planning energy policies that increasingly ignore the warming risk – especially in the developing world and the “nearly developed” world.
The vitriol and points scoring on both sides of this debate are a waste of time. The skeptics have the merit of not trying to prove anything, and their case that the evidence (not the models or the science so much) is poor is manifestly correct: diminishing correlation between CO2 and global temperature, measured sea level rises insignificant, failed predictions from the CO2 side – even if these were silly – Messrs Parker, Viner and Monbiot come to mind.
My non-scientific reading of the current situation is: the CO2 forcing and economic impacts need re-thinking and re-modelling to match evidence since 1995; everyone needs to accept that the solar people are winning on predictions, and to work out why –
is CO2 forcing overstated and solar forcing understated?;
as the answer is uncertain because the science is uncertain, policy makers and professionals and businesses need to come up with a better policy framework (and not the damaging precautionary principle – this is about risk management, not capitulation)- and that means suspending the UN and EU policy rules for now while we learn a bit more;
and what if nothing substantive is really changing at all, and this is all just weather – we can then save a load of taxpayers’ money on unnecessary modelling and research!
By the way, on the specific point of cold weather, I remember the effect of Greenland highs in 78/9 and December 81. I also remember 62/3 but was just too young to note where the Greenland high was. But clearly Greenland highs and late Hudson Bay icing go together, and have pleasingly not changed over my lifetime. That is good news – less is more.

It looks like the UN will soon be running the internet.
I expect the IPCC will have them ban sceptics.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/20/un_committee_internet/

@Pascvaks (continued)
The global climate, when viewed over hundreds of millions of years has winters and summers where the winters (ice ages) persist for millions of years and the summers persist for tens of millions of years. Where we are at right now is a winter period. The earth has been in an ice for the past 3 million years. More immediately speaking we are in a brief thaw. For people in the north where I’m from there’s something commonly referred to as “The January Thaw” which, when it happens, is a brief period of a week or two where daytime temperatures rise well above freezing and snow cover might completely melt. It’s almost like a false spring but everyone knows that January is the dead of winter and the thaw won’t last long. That’s what the current interglacial period (the past 10,000 years) is like – a brief thaw in the dead of global winter. The bad part of that is 10,000 years is the average length of the thaws so statistically speaking we should expect global winter to return real soon now. It would be the ultimate in lucky happenstance if non-condensing anthropogenic greenhouse gases were enough to stop or even significantly extend the interglacial period but I doubt it will be anywhere near enough to be more than a tiny blip of extra surface warmth that might persist for a few centuries until we run out of CO2 locked up in fossil fuel reserves – when that happens it will back to business as usual for global climate if it is indeed not business as usual even today.

Leif Svalgaard says:
December 20, 2010 at 7:46 am
The information about Wolf’s telescope is very interesting. However, the telescope alone does not tell us what standards are being applied today or if they have changed over the years. Has someone had the good sense to publish the standards and the history of their use?

“Pascvaks says:
December 20, 2010 at 5:39 am
During the Little Ice Age (and all the minima and the Big Ice Ages too) both poles experienced significant sea ice growth. Watch the sea ice global total for global cooling-warming indicators. It’s a kind’a global thermometer thingy-wingy. Atmospheric temperature is OK for any one ‘where’ at any one ‘time’ or from any one year to another year, but you don’t want to write home about it. Watch the sea ice. Watch the glaciers.
PS: In today’s much abused and overpopulated world we’ve lost touch with a number of realities. One very important one is that you never trust a politician any farther than you can throw them. (I don’t think I can say that too often.)”
As an “amateur watcher” here I could believe that, but to get to a state of significant sea ice growth we need a “tipping point” where the Globe stands still before significant cooling takes place. We may be at that stage or not as the case may be, but it is significant that there has been no atsmospheric warming now for 15 years (whatever happens to 2010). The N/S sea ice added together is within normal variation and more significantly sea levels are now declining http://sealevel.colorado.edu/ (off just now). Per the Argo site there has been barely any heating of the oceans since early 1960s “For the upper 700m, the increase in heat content was 16 x 1022 J since 1961. This is consistent with the comparison by Roemmich and Gilson (2009) of Argo data with the global temperature time-series of Levitus et al (2005), finding a warming of the 0 – 2000 m ocean by 0.06°C since the (pre-XBT) early 1960’s.” There has been suggestions that recent information is not avaliable from ARGO because of recent cooling. This is still to be verified. So despite a relentless upwards trend of CO2 now at 390ppm temperature rise has stalled and sea ice is not diminishing. Ocean temperatures are flat more or less and sea levels are falling. Are we now at a “tipping point” where the Global heat budget may start to fall? Looking at AMSU-R near surface is more or less like last year but surface is 0.24C below last year.

Leif Svalgaard says:
December 20, 2010 at 7:46 am
Dave Springer says:
December 20, 2010 at 7:30 am
So like the instruments used to view the sun have gotten worse in recent years?
That claim has zero credibility.
Counting of sunspots uses telescopes of same power as 150 years ago [on purpose]. In fact, the very same telescope Rudolf Wolf used in the 1850 is still being used and serves as a nice standard.
Show me the telescope, who is using it and where.
Apples with apples,
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/Flamsteedstelescope.jpg

Leif Svalgaard says:
December 20, 2010 at 7:46 am
…Counting of sunspots uses telescopes of same power as 150 years ago [on purpose]…

I would note that the Dalton minimum was 200 years ago, and the maunder was 300-350 years ago. It’s possible then by your reasoning here (I’m trying not to attribute stance, I realize you’re only making an argument), that we’re still over-counting w.r.t. those eras, correct?

I’m amazed by people with mad graphing skillz all over the place here.
Could someone reading this possibly produce a youtube video showing a picture of the sun getting bluer when sunspots are low and redder when sunspots are high then alongside it show a picture of the earth (not to scale of course) where it turns bluer as global temperature falls and redder as it rises? To sex it up a little put digital counters on the screen labeled year, sunspots, and global average temperature.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I say Youtube videos that go viral are worth a thousand pictures.

Bring on the Gore Minimum!

vukcevic says:
December 20, 2010 at 7:14 am
Are those “Magnetic Ropes” of the Indian levitating Ropes’ kind?
Though, in this case, the “trick” it’s an invisible string of electricity 🙂

“For cold winters to provide positive feedback, snow cover has to survive from one winter to the next so that snow’s higher albedo relative to bare rock will reflect sunlight into space, causing cooler summers.”
Well, snow cover in NOT surviving the spring/summer season:
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_anom.php?ui_set=1&ui_region=nhland&ui_month=5
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_anom.php?ui_set=1&ui_region=nhland&ui_month=8
And the cold winter of 2009/2010 was obviously caused by a extreme negative Arctic Oscillation, that caused cold wether in continental USA and Eurasia , but ALSO record warmth in Greenland, Canada, Eastern Siberia and the Arctic Ocean:
“Winter Temperatures and the Arctic Oscillation”
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=42260
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100105_Figure4.png

I mean Quite.

Lately, I’ve been thinking… wouldn’t it be … interesting… if we continue to cool, and suddenly we are urged to use *more* fossil fuel to offset the drastic cooling….. and *it doesn’t work* because CO2 was never much of a driver in the first place? As we desperately burn everything we can get our hands on, but the Sun’s lack of sunspots is relentless and our climate is inexorably chilled?
(fighting a sudden urge to buy a wood burning stove)
Joanie

Frosty:
Thank you very much for the link you provided – http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/Weather.pdf
A fascinating look at extreme weather events for two millenia. I am impressed by how many floods, freezes etc are accompanied by a comment like “no-one had ever seen such an extreme event in their entire lives”. I guess there is nothing new under the sun!
Malcolm

Kermit says:
December 20, 2010 at 9:24 am
“….it seems to imply “The Year Without a Summer” was caused by the sunspot minimum rather than the eruption of Tambora in 1815. We can be guilty of the same nonsense as the CAGW alarmists.”
Spot On, Kermit!

Sense Seeker says:
December 20, 2010 at 3:10 am
Caution, SS, just down the road from the syllogism lies the faulty dilemma.

Steven Mosher says:
December 20, 2010 at 10:29 am
Jeff Alberts says:
December 20, 2010 at 7:58 am (Edit)
“yes, if we banish the idea of a global average we can get rid of the notion that the sunspot cycle correlates to anything. we can get also get rid of the idea that there was a LIA. /sarc off”
Aren’t these claims true by definition? That is; what you mean by “the LIA” is a global phenomenon. But what reasons are there for insisting that it be a global phenomenon? After all, climate science is a branch of natural history, not a branch of physics. You might benefit from the use of physical theory along the way, but when climate science is complete it will be about the natural history of climate on Earth, just as someday the final word on the Giant Sequoia will be about the history of that plant on Earth. Claiming that there is this abstraction called “global temperature” seems very much like claiming that there is a “global Giant Sequoia.” Perhaps, along the way, such postulates are needed but they will not be part of the final account.

No, no, no, fellas, it’ll be the Eddy Minimum. His love of words eddyfied the world’s men and women.
============

@Murray Sandland Duffin
Dalton minimum was between 1790 -1830 so the figures I linked to are up to 1950.
The series of reconstructed 10-yr averaged sunspot numbers with their 68% uncertainty.
Years are given BP (before present), i.e. the calendar AD year, Yad, is related to the
BP year, Ybp, as Yc=1950-Ybp.
The tabulated years correspond to centers of the corresponding 10-year intervals.
Negative values are artifacts and are consistent with zero within the error limits.
So the figure for 55 is 1950
235 to 285 are dalton minimum?

Skeptics:
Get your arguments straight. Low climate sensitivity means small lags between forcing and response (Lindzen & Giannitsis, 1998). If you think the response to doubled CO2 will be small, but you think that solar forcing is somehow larger than CO2 forcing (some kind of cosmic ray effect, or whatever) then the prediction is that a period of low solar forcing in 2008-2012 would yield a period of globally cool temperatures in the years 2010-2014. If the effective heat capacity were large enough to delay the response by 20 years, the result would be very small variability over the solar cycle (since it’s shorter than 20 years!).

Knowledge is power!

Steven,
Please.
Many of our sceptical leanings in favor of assuming
qualities of natural variation when accepting the LIA or MWP
are based on historical accounts more than proxies or measurements made at the time.
I have made a certain amount of noise about adjustments to the historical record and the current stats.
I believe that these adjustments do not contribute to the accuracy of the reported conditions and tend to confuse rather than clarify things,
I think I am not alone in this.
Isn’t it really the epitome of scientific hubris to
declare that you can derive the temperature 100 years hence ?
If this were a court I would have to say that it assumes facts that are not in evidence.
Really, for all you or any of us know, in 100 years there may be Ice sheets bearing down upon us .
Certainly one would have to take pause at the fact ( with which I assume you would not argue) that the inexorable warming predicted for the last decade failed to
have the effects projected . And though the temnperature may still be above the norm favored by climate scientists ( coincidentally the same time that all of them were young bucks, cool and care free and healthy ) I think there is strong evidence that it has headed down of late, despite the statistical efforts given to maintain the upward trend.
Could this not happen again in 90 years of 11, 30, and, 60 year oscillations which are only now becoming clear ( not to mention the unknown unknowns) ?

Leif Svalgaard says:
December 20, 2010 at 10:43 am
…Starting in 1945 the sunspot number is overcounted [not because of better telescopes as the same telescope that Wolf used in the 1850s was used] but because people tried to ‘improve’ the sunspot number by counting bigger spots several times over [a single large spot was counted as 5 spots].

That sure sounds to me like something that would have been caused by better resolution. “But you see professor, when viewed in this new other scope that single spot is actually made of 5 spots!” I mean if the same scope was used, everything should look the same, so why was a spot that was 1 before 1945 suddenly made into 5? Did contact lenses come into use in 1945? Not sure how else to account for that. Sure it was a human decision that caused an issue, but only improved telescope resolution could make it possible, unless whoever is using this older scope is just deciding to imagine things.
That said, the ‘undercounting’ in Brussels is interesting. It is not what I would have expected.

Instead of a global temperature, one can look at an anomaly map: http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/maproom/.Global/.Atm_Temp/Anomaly.html
While that may show it as being quite cold in the British Isles and Scandinavia, I see it’s been quite warm in northern Canada. Resolute, Nunavut is about 35F warmer than average today.

“Since the AGW alarmists have savaged the reputations of anyone who maintains that the sun has an influence on weather,…”
Nonsense. Climate scientists have not ‘savaged the reputations of anyone who maintains that the sun has an influence on weather’. Scientists agree that solar activity has a very important influence on climate, and that until about 1950 it was the main factor determining global average temperatures, toghether with volcanic activity.
However, solar activity cannot explain the warming seen over the past 30 years. This has been snown in countless peer-reviewed papers. Those who still maintain that ‘it is the sun’ are flogging a dead horse. Such people are rightly ridiculed in science. Only on blogs like these are they still believed.
Yes, the sun has an influence, but that is now dwarfed by the effect of CO2.

Roger Sowell says:
December 20, 2010 at 1:51 pm
In my own view, I suspect it is quite a bit warmer world-wide today than in the 1850-1860 period based on the reports of ice, snow, and very cold winters 150 years ago. But, is it warmer today than in the 1930s?
Interesting, because in the graphs above, the sunspot numbers were pretty low leading up to and through the 1930s, and the AP index was low as well. So what does this say about either the correlation, or about our perceptions?

Roger Sowell says:
December 20, 2010 at 1:51 pm
Also, is it warmer today than when Greenland was settled? We certainly do not see anybody today making settlements on the coast of Greenland like they did back then.
No, because the people living there would probably object to “settlers” taking their land.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_and_towns_in_Greenland

Low solar activity link to cold UK winters (14 April 2010 00:33 UK).
Recent studies suggest that when solar activity is low, “blocking” events move eastwards from above north-eastern North America towards Europe, and become more stable.
A prolonged “blocking” during the most recent winter was responsible for the long spell of freezing conditions that gripped Europe.
Written observations from the period of the Maunder Minimum referred to the wind coming from the east during particularly cold winters, which strengthened the team’s “blocking” hypothesis.
The way in which solar activity affects the behaviour of blocking episodes is linked to the amount of ultraviolet (UV) emissions being produced by the Sun.
So Leif is this what you are looking for, the sign, low sunspot numbers, the cause, solar activity is linked to the amount of ultraviolet (UV) emissions being produced by the Sun.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8615789.stm

The prediction is confirmed.

It can’t be confirmed until we can look backwards and see that the whole thing happened as stated. We can say “the prediction, thus far, is confirmed.” Do not overstate your case.
Overstatement was what the CAGW crowd did (and a possible reason why there is so much data-fiddling going on now—they went out on a limb and they have to “prove” they were right). The data-driven among us should only state what the data supports.

Leif Svalgaard says:
December 20, 2010 at 2:38 pm
Jeremy says:
December 20, 2010 at 1:17 pm
why was a spot that was 1 before 1945 suddenly made into 5? Did contact lenses come into use in 1945?
Leif says,
There is the further issue that there is a minimum size to a [true] sunspot and once your telescope is ‘good enough’, improved resolution does not make any difference. It is like counting people on the other side of the street: using a high-powered telescope for this does not increase the number of people you can see.
Leif, when the next sunspeck appears see if this
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/galileonewton.jpg
GOOD ENOUGH.

Sense Seeker says:
December 20, 2010 at 2:04 pm
“Since the AGW alarmists have savaged the reputations of anyone who maintains that the sun has an influence on weather,…”
Nonsense. Climate scientists have not ‘savaged the reputations of anyone who maintains that the sun has an influence on weather’. Scientists agree that solar activity has a very important influence on climate, and that until about 1950 it was the main factor determining global average temperatures, toghether with volcanic activity.
However, solar activity cannot explain the warming seen over the past 30 years. This has been snown in countless peer-reviewed papers. Those who still maintain that ‘it is the sun’ are flogging a dead horse. Such people are rightly ridiculed in science. Only on blogs like these are they still believed.
Yes, the sun has an influence, but that is now dwarfed by the effect of CO2.
_________
Sense Seeker, I agree with the general direction of your comments, but again, the vast majority of those here on WUWT will not. I do however believe that the role of the sun on climate, through secondary effects, such as the GCR/Cloud effects, high-energy UV, etc. has not been fully accounted for in Global Climate Models because it is not fully understood nor even acknowledged. When and if the secondary solar effects are considered and put properly into the models, it will be interesting to see what kind of difference it makes when compared to the effect of the 40% rise in CO2 since the 1700’s.

“So Leif is this what you are looking for, the sign, low sunspot numbers, the cause, solar activity is linked to the amount of ultraviolet (UV) emissions being produced by the Sun.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8615789.stm
According to the article, that only applies to England.
I didn’t know a hair could be split that fine.

Leif Svalgaard says:
December 20, 2010 at 4:33 pm
R. Gates says:
December 20, 2010 at 3:58 pm
I do however believe that the role of the sun on climate, through secondary effects, such as the GCR/Cloud effects, high-energy UV, etc. has not been fully accounted for in Global Climate Models
All known – and quantifiable – effects [UV, TSI, etc] are fully incorporated into Global Climate Models already.
——–
I would throw in with Gates on this one.
———-
then:
Leif Svalgaard says:
December 20, 2010 at 4:39 pm
harrywr2 says:
December 20, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Which is why the scientists at CERN are doing very expensive CLOUD experiments.
No, the scientists at CERN are not doing any such experiments. CERN only lends some unused, obsolete capacity to outside scientists for this.
————–
Wow you make it sound like they are lending a trash can to some moonshiners.
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/research/CLOUD-en.html

For cold winters to provide positive feedback, snow cover has to survive from one winter to the next so that snow’s higher albedo relative to bare rock will reflect sunlight into space, causing cooler summers.

I submit that this statement is incorrect (an over simplification). The key issue is when and where the snow falls and how long it stays on the ground. Snow will have its highest impact on albedo if it is a late snowfall when things are starting to green up and the sun is near its highest altitude during the day. Snow fall on the ground in late May and early June will have a significant impact on total energy absorbed compared to the same snow event in late December or January when the sun is at its lowest altitude (northern hemisphere) and all the vegetation is withered for the winter.
To assign an appropriate weight to the effect of a snow fall you would have to consider the solar angle at the time of the snow fall, the area covered and the duration of the snow fall (with some consideration for its depth). Multiple large area snow falls late in winter and early spring could reflect away considerably more of the sun’s heat than the same snow depth deposited in a single snow storm in the depth of winter.
Think area under the curve with the curve plotted according to area covered and duration of cover then weighted by the suns angle to the surface at mid day.
Larry

Charles S. Opalek, PE says:
December 20, 2010 at 12:59 pm
Theodore Landscheidt predicted a Grand Solar Minimum starting in 1990 bottoming out in 2030 and ending by 2070. This isn’t guess work or hyperbole. This is very predictable planetary mechanics controlling the weather on the Sun, which in turn controls our weather here. It is well underway as demonstrated by the decade of recent cooling.
That statement is not correct. He incorrectly predicted a grand minimum for 1990, and then moved onto 2030 as the height of the next grand minimum. Theodor was incorrect because he was looking at the wrong indicator related to solar angular momentum. He used the zero crossings that occur when the Sun is at the centre of the solar system which are now seen to sometimes occur near grand minima. There is extensive study relating to this on my blog if you are interested.
Theo Goodwin and Robuk are correct about how we count spots today along with the equipment. You have to be very careful when reading Leif’s replies as he does not give all the information needed to form a reasoned outcome.
The telescopes today see far more than those used by Wolf, only the magnification is the same. When it comes to seeing the aperture size is what is important. An 80mm Wolf telescope is able under the best conditions to see a spot that is 1051 kilometers wide, the modern 150mm telescope has resolution down to 558 kilometers. This is indisputable and I have setup myself two telescopes to prove this. So the new telescope sees twice as much. Looking at the Locarno and Catania sunspot drawings you can see they are counting specks that are 700 kilometers across, Wolf couldn’t and didn’t count these.
Leif also admits that after 1945 the counting method has changed substantially, this alone shows we can’t compare the modern count with the Wolf reconstruction of the Dalton. We also had very good records during cycle 6 so we don’t need to only focus on cycle 5.
Today’s SIDC count is in line with the NOAA count (in raw format). I don’t believe we are under counting spots today. Leif uses a perceived deviation between the F10.7 flux values and the sunspot record to bolster his claim, but he uses his own F10.7 data to show this deviation. If the standard Canadian F10.7 data is used there is no deviation. This can be viewed in the “L&P debunking” article on my blog along with a thorough history on the Wolf telescope and counting methods on the Layman’s page.
richard jenkins says:
December 20, 2010 at 4:45 am
Look at this data set, it goes back 11,000 years, until 50 years before now.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/solar_variability/solanki2004-ssn.txt
Where is the Dalton minimum?
If you plot the data correctly it is clearly present.

Dan Kirk-Davidoff started out “Skeptics: ….” then said something about sensitivity.
Dan, sensitivity derived the from the CO2 to temperature relationship cherrypicks one relationship and ignores other factors that drive temperature. If sensitivity is really as high as the catastrophists say, then the ocean must be storing most of the heat because we have not seen the predicted warming. But that heat could only be stored in the ocean by overturning which would also sequester CO2. So the simple conclusion is that if we stop producing CO2, the “extra” (above 280) will diminish by 1/2 in about 40 years. Crisis averted, now go have a talk with China.