Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Well, I wasn’t going to mention this paper, but it seems to be getting some play in the blogosphere. Our friend Nicola Scafetta is back again, this time with a paper called “Solar and planetary oscillation control on climate change: hind-cast, forecast and a comparison with the CMIP5 GCMs”. He’s posted it up over at Tallbloke’s Talkshop. Since I’m banned over at Tallbloke’s, I thought I’d discuss it here. The paper itself is here, take your Dramamine before jumping on board. Dr. Scafetta has posted here on WUWT several times before, each time with his latest, greatest, new improved model. Here’s how well Scafetta’s even more latester, greatester new model hindcasts, as well as what it predicts, compared with HadCRUT4:
Figure 1. Figure 16A from Scafetta 2013. This shows his harmonic model alone (black), plus his model added to the average of the CMIP5 models following three different future “Representative Concentration Pathways”, or RCPs. The RCPs give various specified future concentrations of greenhouse gases. HadCRUT4 global surface temperature (GST) is in gray.
So far, in each of his previous three posts on WUWT, Dr. Scafetta has said that the Earth’s surface temperature is ruled by a different combination of cycles depending on the post:
First Post: 20 and 60 year cycles. These were supposed to be related to some astronomical cycles which were never made clear, albeit there was much mumbling about Jupiter and Saturn.
Second Post: 9.1, 10-11, 20 and 60 year cycles. Here are the claims made for these cycles:
9.1 years : this was justified as being sort of near to a calculation of (2X+Y)/4, where X and Y are lunar precession cycles,
“10-11″ years: he never said where he got this one, or why it’s so vague.
20 years: supposedly close to an average of the sun’s barycentric velocity period.
60 years: kinda like three times the synodic period of Jupiter/Saturn. Why three times? Why not?
Third Post: 9.98, 10.9, and 11.86 year cycles. These are claimed to be
9.98 years: slightly different from a long-term average of the spring tidal period of Jupiter and Saturn.
10.9 years: may be related to a quasi 11-year solar cycle … or not.
11.86 years: Jupiter’s sidereal period.
The latest post, however, is simply unbeatable. It has no less than six different cycles, with periods of 9.1, 10.2, 21, 61, 115, and 983 years. I haven’t dared inquire too closely as to the antecedents of those choices, although I do love the “3” in the 983 year cycle. Plus there’s a mystery ingredient, of course.
Seriously, he’s adding together six different cycles. Órale, that’s a lot! Now, each of those cycles has three different parameters that totally define the cycle. These are the period (wavelength), the amplitude (size), and the phase (starting point in time) of the cycle.
This means that not only is Scafetta exercising free choice in the number of cycles that he includes (in this case six). He also has free choice over the three parameters for each cycle (period, amplitude, and phase). That gives him no less than 18 separate tunable parameters.
Just roll that around in your mouth and taste it, “eighteen tunable parameters”. Is there anything that you couldn’t hindcast given 18 different tunable parameters?
Anyhow, if I were handing out awards, I’d certainly give him the first award for having eighteen arbitrary parameters. But then, I’d have to give him another award for his mystery ingredient.
Because of all things, the mystery ingredient in Scafetta’s equation is the average hindcast (and forecast) modeled temperature of the CMIP5 climate models. Plus the mystery ingredient comes with its own amplitude parameter (0.45), along with a hidden parameter for the zero point of the average model temperatures before being multiplied by the amplitude parameter. So that makes twenty different adjustable parameters.
Now, I don’t even know what to say about this method. I’m dumbfounded. He’s starting with the average of the CMIP5 climate models, adjusted by an amplitude parameter and a zeroing parameter. Then he’s figuring the deviations from that adjusted average model result based on his separate 6-cycle, 18-parameter model. The sum of the two is his prediction. I truly lack words to describe that, it’s such an awesome logical jump I can only shake my head in awe at the daring trapeze leaps of faith …
I suppose at this point I need to quote the story again of Freeman Dyson, Enrico Fermi, “Johnny” Von Neumann, and the elephant. Here is Freeman Dyson, with the tale of tragedy:
By the spring of 1953, after heroic efforts, we had plotted theoretical graphs of meson–proton scattering.We joyfully observed that our calculated numbers agreed pretty well with Fermi’s measured numbers. So I made an appointment to meet with Fermi and show him our results. Proudly, I rode the Greyhound bus from Ithaca to Chicago with a package of our theoretical graphs to show to Fermi.
When I arrived in Fermi’s office, I handed the graphs to Fermi, but he hardly glanced at them. He invited me to sit down, and asked me in a friendly way about the health of my wife and our newborn baby son, now fifty years old. Then he delivered his verdict in a quiet, even voice.
“There are two ways of doing calculations in theoretical physics”, he said. “One way, and this is the way I prefer, is to have a clear physical picture of the process that you are calculating. The other way is to have a precise and self-consistent mathematical formalism. You have neither.”
I was slightly stunned, but ventured to ask him why he did not consider the pseudoscalar meson theory to be a self-consistent mathematical formalism. He replied, “Quantum electrodynamics is a good theory because the forces are weak, and when the formalism is ambiguous we have a clear physical picture to guide us.With the pseudoscalar meson theory there is no physical picture, and the forces are so strong that nothing converges. To reach your calculated results, you had to introduce arbitrary cut-off procedures that are not based either on solid physics or on solid mathematics.”
In desperation I asked Fermi whether he was not impressed by the agreement between our calculated numbers and his measured numbers. He replied, “How many arbitrary parameters did you use for your calculations?” I thought for a moment about our cut-off procedures and said, “Four.” He said, “I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.”
With that, the conversation was over. I thanked Fermi for his time and trouble, and sadly took the next bus back to Ithaca to tell the bad news to the students.
Given that lesson from Dyson, and bearing in mind that Scafetta is using a total of 20 arbitrary parameters … are we supposed to be surprised that Nicola can make an elephant wiggle his trunk? Heck, with that many parameters, he should be able to make that sucker tap dance and spit pickle juice …
Now, you can expect that if Nicola Scafetta shows up, he will argue that somehow the 20 different parameters are not arbitrary, oh, no, they are fixed by the celestial processes. They will likely put forward the same kind of half-ast-ronomical explanation they’ve used before—that this one represents (2X+Y)/4, where X and Y are lunar precession cycles, or that another one’s 60 year cycle is kind of near three times the synodic period of Jupiter and Saturn (59.5766 years) and close is good enough, that kind of thing. Or perhaps they’ll make the argument that Fourier analysis shows peaks that are sort of near to their chosen numbers, and that’s all that’s needed.
The reality is, if you give me a period in years, I can soon come up with several astronomical cycles that can be added, subtracted, and divided to give you something very near the period you’ve given me … which proves nothing.
Scafetta has free choice of how many cycles to include, and free choice as to the length, amplitude, and phase of each those cycles. And even if he can show that the length of one of his cycles is EXACTLY equal to some astronomical constant, not just kind of near it, he still has totally free choice of phase and amplitude for that cycle. So to date, he’s the leading contender for the 2013 Johnny Von Neumann award, which is given for the most tunable parameters in any scientific study.
The other award I’d give this paper would be for Scafetta’s magical Figure 11, which I reproduce below in all its original glory.
Figure 2. Scafetta’s Figure 11 (click to enlarge) ORIGINAL CAPTION: (Left) Schematic representation of the rise and fall of several civilizations since Neolithic times that well correlates with the 14C radio- nucleotide records used for estimating solar activity (adapted from Eddy’s figures in Refs. [90, 91]). Correlated solar-climate multisecular and millennial patterns are recently confirmed [43, 44, 47]. (Right) Kepler’s Trigon diagram of the great Jupiter and Saturn conjunctions between 1583 to 1763 [89], highlighting 20 year and 60 year astronomical cycles, and a slow millennial rotation.
First off, does that graphic, Figure 11 in Scafetta’s opus, make you feel better or worse about Dr. Scafetta’s claims? Does it give you that warm fuzzy feeling about his science? And why are Kepler’s features smooched out sideways and his fingers so long? At least let me give the poor fellow back his original physiognomy.
There, that’s better. Next, you need to consider the stepwise changes he shows in “carbon 14”, and the square-wave nature of the advance and retreat of alpine glaciers at the lower left. That in itself was good, I hadn’t realized that the glaciers advanced and retreated in that regular a fashion, or that carbon 14 was unchanged for years before and after each shift in concentration. And I did appreciate that there were no units for any of the four separate graphs on the page, that counted heavily in his favor. But what I awarded him full style points for was the seamless segue from alpine glaciers to the “winter severity index” in the year 1000 … that was a breathtaking leap.
And as you might expect from a man citing Kepler, Scafetta treats scientific information like fine wine—he doesn’t want anything of recent vintage. Apparently on his planet you have to let science mellow for some decades before you bring it out to breathe … and in that regard, I direct your attention to the citation in the bottom center of his Figure 11, “Source: Geophysical Data, J. Biddy J. B. Eddy (USA) 1978″. (Thanks to Nicola for the correction, the print was too small to read.)
Where he stepped up to the big leagues, though, is in the top line in the chart. Click on the chart to enlarge it if you haven’t done so yet, so you can see all the amazing details. The “Sumeric Maximum”, the collapse of Machu Pichu, the “Greek Minimum”, the end of the Maya civilization, the “Pyramid Maximum” … talk about being “Homeric in scope”, he’s even got the “Homeric Minimum”.
Finally, he highlights the “20 year and 60 year astronomical cycles” in Kepler’s chart at the right. In fact, what he calls the “20 year” cycles shown in Kepler’s dates at the right vary from 10 to 30 years according to Kepler’s own figures shown inside the circle, and what he calls the “60 year astronomical cycles” include cycles from 50 to 70 years …
In any case, I’m posting all of this because I just thought folks might like to know of Nicola Scafetta’s latest stunning success. Using a mere six cycles and only twenty tunable parameters plus the average of a bunch of climate models, he has emulated the historical record with pretty darn good accuracy.
…
And now that he has explained just exactly how to predict the climate into the future, I guess the only mystery left is what he’ll do for an encore performance. Because this most recent paper of his, this one will be very hard to top.
In all seriousness, however, let me make my position clear.
Are there cycles in the climate? Yes, there are cycles. However, they are not regular, clockwork cycles like those of Jupiter and Saturn. Instead, one cycle will appear, and will be around for a while, and then disappear to be replaced by some longer or shorter cycle. It is maddening, frustrating, but that’s the chaotic nature of the beast. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation doesn’t beat like a clock, nor does the El Nino or the Madden-Julian oscillation or any other climate phenomena.
What is the longest cycle that can be detected in a hundred year dataset? My rule of thumb is that even if I have two full cycles, my results are too uncertain to lean on. I want three cycles so I can at least get a sense about the variation. So for a hundred year dataset, any cycle over fifty years in length is a non-starter, and thirty-three years and shorter is what I will start to trust.
Can you successfully hindcast temperatures using other cycles than the ones Scafetta uses? Certainly. He has demonstrated that himself, as this is the fourth combination of arbitrarily chosen cycles that he has used. Note that in each case he has claimed the model was successful. This by no means exhausts the possible cycle combinations that can successfully emulate the historical temperature.
Does Scafetta’s accomplishment mean anything? Sure. It means that with six cycles and no less than twenty tunable parameters, you can do just about anything. Other than that, no. It is meaningless.
Could he actually test his findings? Sure, and I’ve suggested it to him. What you need to do is run the analysis again, but this time using the data from say 1910 to 1959 only. Derive your 20 fitted variables using this data alone.
Then test your 20 fitted variables against the data from 1960 to 2009, and see how the variables pan out.
Then do it the other way around. Train the model on the later data, and see how well it does on the early data. It’s not hard to do. He knows how to do it. But if he has ever done it, I have not seen anywhere that he has reported the results.
How do I know all this? Folks, I can’t tell you how many late nights I’ve spent trying to fit any number and combination of cycles to the historical climate data. I’ve used Fourier analysis and periodicity analysis and machine-learning algorithms and wavelets and stuff I’ve invented myself. Whenever I’ve thought I have something, as soon as it leaves the training data and starts on the out-of-sample data, it starts to diverge from reality. And of course, the divergence increases over time.
But that’s simply the same truth we all know about computer weather forecasting programs—out-of-sample, they don’t do all that well, and quickly become little better than a coin flip.
Finally, even if the cycles fit the data and we ignore the ridiculous number of arbitrary parameters, where is the physical mechanism connecting some (2*X+T)/4 combination of two astronomical cycles, and the climate? As Enrico Fermi pointed out, you need to have either “a clear physical picture of the process that you are calculating” or “a precise and self-consistent mathematical formalism”.
w.
PS—Please don’t write in to say that although Nicola is wrong, you have the proper combination of cycles, based on your special calculations. Also, please don’t try to explain how a cycle of 21 years is really, really similar to the Jupiter-Saturn synodic cycle of 19+ years. I’m not buying cycles of any kind, motorcycles, epicycles, solar cycles, bicycles, circadian cycles, nothing. Sorry. Save them for some other post, they won’t go bad, but please don’t post them here.
“Nicola” is the female diminutive of Nicholas, the correct male diminutive is, ” Nicoli”. Have you mis-spelt Mr Scafetta’s’ name or were his parents influenced by Johnny Cash’s, ” A Boy Named Sue”?
Willis is right about the impossibility of prediction from analysing all cycles that can affect the system energy budget because there are many cycles internal to the Earth system and they exist in infinite variety both individually and via their constant interaction. Furthermore they can come and go.
However, I suggest that one can discern the net effect on the global energy budget at any given time because the global air circulation changes as a negative system response to all available forcing elements, rather like Willis’s own thermostat effect but extended globally.
In general a world with zonal jets and poleward climate zones is warming as a result of the net effect of all forcing elements combined and a world with meridional jets and equatorward climate zones is cooling as a result of the net effect of all forcing elements combined.
Then consider the relative scale of the possible cycles and I suggest that solar and oceanic rule all else but even then the net effect of their interaction at any given time is highly variable.
Nonetheless a look at the global circulation pattern gives a rough and ready indication of the current trend whether it be warming or cooling.
In the late 20th century we had a warming pattern. Now we have a cooling pattern.
If you sum two sine waves whose frequencies are close, you get alternate cancellation and addition. The result appears a one cycle that appears and disappears.
Thanks
JK
Eighteen “tunable parameters”.
No real deifference from CMIP5 GCM models then:-)
“Could he actually test his findings? Sure, and I’ve suggested it to him. What you need to do is run the analysis again, but this time using the data from say 1910 to 1959 only. Derive your 20 fitted variables using this data alone.
Then test your 20 fitted variables against the data from 1960 to 2009, and see how the variables pan out.”
The question is: Have the IPCC consensus GCM programmers ever done anything like that?
Honest question. If anyone can point to a paper discussing such a validating approach, please do so.
Okay, Scafetta’s approximation is not very scientific and contains a lot of free parameters capable of approximating just about anything. I can agree with that.
That does not mean you have to write an article full of insults and hate about it. All of the scientific discussion content of the article could fit into one, maybe two paragraphs. The rest is completely unnecessary and for me it further lowers credibility of WUWT as a whole.
We’ve seen worse right here on WUWT. My personal favorite is the analysis where the temperature record was approximated solely by aliasing errors.
Nicola Scafetta’s paper, which I have, is an excellent account of the various astronomical influences that may have a bearing on the climate and is, for this purpose, a goldmine of information.
Willis is puzzled by the 10.6-year to 11-year cycle mentioned by Scafetta. That may be the sunspot cycle,, which does indeed have a detectable influence on temperature. The astronomer William Herschel, in 1801, was reading Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” when he noticed that Smith’s table of annual grain prices on the London market was anti-correlated with the sunspot number. More sunspots, more solar output, better weather, more crops, lower price.
For these reasons I should hesitate to dismiss the astronomical approach as astrological. The heat for this planet comes largely from without, so astronomical cycle-fitting is not an unacceptable hypothesis. One can test it in the simplest way by comparing its projections with those of the IPCC and with the change in real-world temperatures over future years.
I have asked Nicola Scafetta to let me have an equation that will allow me to include his projections alongside those of the IPCC in the monthly Global Warming Prediction Index. I suspect that his model will outperform the IPCC, which suffers from a very serious overdose of tunable parameters. Even if the Scafetta model proves better than the IPCC’s projections merely by accident, it will usefully remind us of how wrong the IPCC’s projections have proven to be.
If I were a betting man, I’d back Scafetta’s projections against those of the IPCC any day, for one very powerful reason. Scafetta is not trying to generate a particular result for political reasons. He is genuinely trying to get a handle on whether and to what extent astronomical influences may influence the Earth’s climate. Let him continue his research: he is well aware of its limitations, but some very powerful mathematicians are working along similar lines and are quite close to succeeding. As Willis himself has discovered by experiment, taking due account of both exogenous and endogenous influences on the climate object is not easy. Given that object’s chaoticity, it may be forever impossible.
The IPCC, in painful contrast to Dr. Scafetta, only justifies its continued existence if it continues to produce blood-curdling reports regardless of what is not happening in the real world. Yvo de Boer, who was until recently in charge of that clattering train, came out a few days ago with a statement that the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC will be really, really scary. It is that vicious and calculated exploitation of ordinary people’s fears for the sake of personal and political profit that we should vigorously condemn until its perpetrators have been flung from office for aye.
Figure 11 show the collapse of Machu Picchu as correlating well with radionuclides, and the text says “These events were likely driven by climatic variations”. So solar activity brought small-pox infected conquistadors to South America? A joke paper in a joke journal.
I suspect the cyclists will not respond favorably to your post, Willis.
Regards
“PS—Please don’t write in to say that although Nicola is wrong, you have the proper combination of cycles, based on your special calculations. Also, please don’t try to explain how a cycle of 21 years is really, really similar to the Jupiter-Saturn synodic cycle of 19+ years. I’m not buying cycles of any kind, motorcycles, epicycles, solar cycles, bicycles, circadian cycles, nothing. Sorry. Save them for some other post, they won’t go bad, but please don’t post them here.”
Strange. Am I the only one who did not get the memo about Willis’ promotion to Uber-Censor who may dictate that lines of thought or investigation that he does not support may not be posted here?
Or is it new site policy?
Ah well… luckily there are other sites that do air ideas that Willis does not agree with…
I remember that I just happened to make the first comment on one of Scafetta’s earlier postings. I said ” Without a physical mechanism, this is just astrology”. And people kept saying – it fits, there must be something to it. However it is just curve fitting, and Scafetta has in effect disproved the basis of his own work. How? Well each exercise in fitting produces different values for the parameters, which means they cannot have an underlying physical reality.There’s nothing there.
If your hindcast matches HadCrud 1900-1979.. you have done something wrong.
As I told a Met Office atmospheric scientist & fellow chorister a couple of years ago, when he asked me how I could I explain their models projections/predictions of climate change & temperature rise, I painfully had to explain to him that the Met Office boffins had to programme their “puter” to show a given warming for a given climate sensitivity, it won’t do it all by itself!!!! He sadly seemed rather hurt & abashed!
But does it do any good in the near term, say 5-10 years? All the models seem to be a best guess to fit the narrative, anyway, so can it do much worse?
Based on as you note, cycles come and go (a cyclical cycle?). Without a longer – and accurate – sample set, it is obviously hard/impossible to model; a guessing game. But we aren’t (or shouldn’t be, at this stage) looking to model the life of the earth or even a century scale. A several year outlook, if it can be reasonably close, over the next few years will be of much more value than 30 years or more.
Actually, I’m not even sure it is going to make much difference what the climate really does next year or in 5 years time, let alone 100 years. Perhaps farmers, horticulturalists can take advantage, I don’t know, I’m not a green thumb. The annual climate and weather cycle has so much variability that even a few degrees change on average will make little difference to western civilization.
Hear Hear Lord Monckton. I have deepest awe for Willis and can hear his frustration. But Dr. Scafetta pursues an area that is plausible whether or not scientifically enough for everyone. At least it is with an open mind and striving for understanding of the underlying physics. Unlike warmists who have already decided what it is, us, and that we should all be punished for it.
By all means point out his errors. That is helpful, but none of us know what will be uncovered to enlighten us.
Thank you Anthony for a forum where we can progress this stuff.
Butterflies have declined by 75% in the UK so there should be 75% less hurricanes on the East Coast of America.
Does the height of the Great Pyramid feature anywhere in the model?
So, WUWT is panning a projection that says what we’ve always said (it’s not CO2, its a cycle)?
So confused….
Two primary climate ‘cycles’ are variable about 9.1 years and the decadal one around 64-65 years. They are not primary astronomic (planetary orbital) periodicities but appear to be result from the cross-modulation of the solar and the Earth’s magnetic fields variability
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSC1.htm
But how the changes in magnetic fields intensity can influence the climate?
In the last few days I have read number of papers, some from the Stanford University experts running the HAARP experiment (Alaska) and it appears they do have some ideas, not far off from:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AGT.htm
hence I am not surprised that another S.U. expert has attempted to ‘rubish’ my findings despite that he has all calculations and couldn’t fault them.
This article has taught me a lot in an abstract sense about cycles and tunable parameters. That’s precious for someone as mathematically challenged as I am.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
July 23, 2013 at 3:49 am
“As Willis himself has discovered by experiment, taking due account of both exogenous and endogenous influences on the climate object is not easy. Given that object’s chaoticity, it may be forever impossible.”
If Scafetta’s approach is partially successful (and some past recordings, of Rhine freezings, of Nile levels, of Lake Victoria etc indicate that it might become so), it would show that the Earth’s climate system is not a freely oscillating chaotic system but a chaotic system coupled to the bigger system of solar system influences. We would still be incapable of exactly predicting some of its faster swings but we might become able to rather accurately predict a low frequency component.
I echo Monckton’s request to let Scafetta continue. IPCC GCM’s are more wrong than a WAG.
From GabrielHBay on July 23, 2013 at 3:53 am:
Gee, we’re all real sorry about your educationally impoverished upbringing, clearly evident by Willis politely saying “Please” which you subsequently understood as meaning Willis would be acting for the site as a (insert invocation of Godwin’s Law).
ReallyRealClimate would gladly welcome you as their fifth regular reader (with two of the others being Morano and Watts keeping tabs on the “competition”). With only four or so new postings a month, it would take hardly any of your time at all.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
July 23, 2013 at 3:49 am
I have asked Nicola Scafetta to let me have an equation that will allow me to include his projections alongside those of the IPCC in the monthly Global Warming Prediction Index.
Here is an equation with ‘back-casting’ to 1880, that doesn’t require cycles of any kind extraterrestrial, planetary or solar
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SST-NAP.htm
and if not just a coincidence, it does suggest significant cooling in the N. Atlantic.
Willis, thanks for writing this post. Aside from the ~11 year solar cycle (where measured solar intensity is known to vary with sunspots), the rest of the Scafetta opus is pseudo-scientific rubbish. I by page 8 I switched from reading to skimming the paper, looking for a humorous punch line that never came. If someone as smart as Dyson can understand that lots of free parameters allows one to fit virtually any data, why is this fact apparently invisible to Scafetta?
Willis
Love your posts. I think we need to change all temp readings to degrees K and realize we are talking about minute perturbations. I got involved with AGW back in ’06 and quickly saw the temperature trend since 1880 could be easily represented by a 60 year sign wave superimposed with a 0.5C/decade linear trend. Another 20-30 years of serious climatic research and we might be close to a reasonable GCM.
Bill
Willis, it would be neat if you could try to model the price of Apple`s stock using the same oscillation model… And if successful, to see who would put any money on it.
Willis has nailed it but some folks may miss the import of what he has said.
200 years ago Fourier pointed out that ANY continuous waveform can be created by adding up a series of sine waves. In other words, the fact that Scafetta, or anyone else, can match a waveform using a set of sine waves proves nothing.
The fact that we can decompose any waveform into a set of cycles does not prove that those cycles have any relationship to the cause of the waveform. Suppose that I turn a switch on and then, some time later, I turn it off. The current through the switch will be a rectangular pulse, off-on-off. There will be a set of sine waves that produce that waveform. If you didn’t know about the switch, you could postulate a set of oscillators that produced the waveform. LOL.
MattN said on July 23, 2013 at 4:20 am:
Just because it’s a cycle, and you’re looking for a cycle, doesn’t automatically make it a cycle you want.
For example, who would want to tend the firebox and check the water level while riding a Ballard and Wellington coal-fed steam-powered two wheeler? Answer: nobody did, which is why you never heard of them.
Which is too bad as the three wheeler variant would be useful today in many parts of the world, an idea which deserves to be gaining traction and picking up steam.
K writes: “I can agree with that.
That does not mean you have to write an article full of insults and hate about it.”
I’m afraid this is W.E.’s m.o. I find it extremely distasteful. Why does everything have to be so personal with the man?
Why use 6 parameters when it appears one will suffice?
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/thumb/2/28/Sunspot_Numbers.png/800px-Sunspot_Numbers.png
@kadaka (KD Knoebel)
You clearly have no inkling of the concept of a hint of satire. To suggest from my comment that I would lean to RealClimate is really hilarious. I nearly choked from laughter. No, my friend, let me break it to you in simple language… I actually find WUWT often, and that includes Willis, just a tad too warmist for my taste. All this credence still given to “CO2 -> some warming, we just argue about how much”… and then interesting lines of though like astronomical cycles, etc, being treated with disdain leaves me, shall one say, edgy. That said, I do find WUWT very educational most of the time and I do appreciate what is done here (most of the time). But may I also add that Willis’ snidy arrogance gets under my skin from time to time. I am sure I am not the only one who feels that way.
REPLY: I think if you ever met him in person, your vision of “snidy arrogance” would evaporate. Snidy arrogance is what we expect from Dr. Sheldon Cooper (Big Bang Theory TV show). With Willis, a man who has lived with the islanders of the pacific, ridden the rails, fished the seas, acted as a tour guide, worked as a carpenter, and published scientific papers, what we get is a man rooted in reality. – Anthony
Willis
I consider the tone of this post beneath you.
Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. You ridicule Dr Scafetta for using 18 (or is it 20) different parameters which he consiiders are in play when predicting climate. That is a cheap shot, and even an absurd point.
I am sure that you would accept that climate is inherently more complex than the tides, and that it is inherently far more difficult to predict cliimate than to predict the tides.
One of the more advanced tidal prediction machines, built in the 19th century, had at least 40 different tunable parameters which were taken into account when predicting the tides. This machine was very accurate, and greatly advanced the cause of navigation. At the time the UK quite literally ruled the waves and it was because of innovations like that that the UK was the greatest sea faring nation..
I accept that Scafetta needs to explain and prove the relevance and relationship of the chosen cycle parameters. If it fits there may be something in it, but then again there may not.
So, Milankovitch cycles that are easily discernible from a temperature graph over a timescale that encompasses several glacial maximums aren’t climate drivers?
The question is not whether these cycles affect climate but rather whether they are 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or greater order variables. Obviously, Milankovitch cycles are a higher order than many other cycles. The cyclical nature of climate is difficult to deny, even Alaskan arctic wildfire preponderance has been found to be cyclical. Nature has trained our brains in the way of the cycle from the daily and annual rhythm of our lives to the discovery of cycles encompassing every facet of nature from the water cycle to the rock cycle. Yes, nature it would seem loves cycles, why should climate be an exception?
grumpyoldmanuk says
“Nicola” is the female diminutive of Nicholas, the correct male diminutive is, ” Nicoli”. Have you mis-spelt Mr Scafetta’s’ name or were his parents influenced by Johnny Cash’s, ” A Boy Named Sue”?
Grumpy, Scafetta is an Italian name, and in Italian Nicola is not a female diminutive, or a diminutive at all, and Nicoli is non-existent as a name AFAIK. Nicola is one variant of the male name, another being Niccolò (as in Macchiavelli). Nicola Tesla was not female either. Please do not comment so confidently on things you know nothing about.
From the article:
Fermi says: “One way, and this is the way I prefer, is to have a clear physical picture of the process that you are calculating. The other way is to have a precise and self-consistent mathematical formalism. You have neither.”
For a moment I thought that was Leif speaking to Vuk.
(I posted this some time ago but it got lost somewhere, so here it is again)
Two primary climate ‘cycles’ are variable about 9.1 years and the decadal one around 64-65 years. They are not primary astronomic (planetary orbital) periodicities but appear to be result from the cross-modulation of the solar and the Earth’s magnetic fields variability
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSC1.htm
But how the changes in magnetic fields intensity can influence the climate?
In the last few days I have read number of papers, some from the Stanford University experts running the HAARP experiment (Alaska) and it appears they do have some ideas, not far off from:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AGT.htm
hence I am not surprised that another S.U. expert has attempted to ‘rubish’ my findings despite that he has all calculations and couldn’t fault them.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
July 23, 2013 at 3:49 am
I have asked Nicola Scafetta to let me have an equation that will allow me to include his projections alongside those of the IPCC in the monthly Global Warming Prediction Index.
Here is an equation with ‘back-casting’ to 1880, that doesn’t require cycles of any kind extraterrestrial, planetary or solar
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SST-NAP.htm
and if not just a coincidence, it suggest significant cooling in the N. Atlantic.
I do not think 6 cycles – 18 parameter is inherently untenable. If there are 6 different cycle periods in the data, then it would take 6 cycles to model it.
This is different than say for example a pure brute force 18 parameter polynomial fit where the value is close, but the min/max do not occur. If you 6 periods is excessive, just wait till Scafetta has enough data to work in the Milankovitch cycles, and then perhaps cycles from the galactic orbit. of course continental drift would probably muddle that.
Between the moon and the 4 gas giants, there are 5 or more periods (not just orbit). How all of this interacts might be the reason the climate periods are different from astronomical periods.
Anyways, the multiple mixed periods does show why attempts to model climate on any single period does not work.
@GabrielHBay, July 23, 2013 at 3:53 am
Please, sir, try not to be so bloody precious. Guys like the irascible Mr Eschenbach are worth their weight in gold. His intellectual discipline is second to none and he rightly does not suffer fools gladly. He is the best kind of intellectual opponent. There’s no fawning, no undue flattery. Just a brutal thirst for truth and objectivity, a hunger to strip away all the superfluous and distracting flimflam and get to the heart of a matter. Willis is a rare and genuine intellectual WYSIWYG. A tenacious terrier of a mind that we should all be very grateful for. What’s more, I think everyone else here would agree that he has every right to try and guide thread content below his own post. As always he asked very politely.
If you think you have a valid point, then put up. If not, shut up. If your point is found invalid, it will be eviscerated by the Williserator (or is it Williseraptor?). If credibility is found in your reasoning, WUWT’s own resident bloodhound-terrier cross has proven himself perfectly capable of the graciousness one would expect of such a man of the world. Your sniping is of a much lower order.
So please refrain in future of cluttering up this bastion of fierce minds unless you actually have something worthwhile to bring to the party, there’s a good boy.
GabrielHBay says:
July 23, 2013 at 5:54 am
@kadaka (KD Knoebel)
You clearly have no inkling of the concept of a hint of satire
That was satire? 404
The mystery ingredient is a dataset that already includes regularly updated hindcasts. If you use climate models that already match history in your own model, and weight it correctly, almost any lesser weighted small signal can be added without ruining the hindcast. This product is unspeakably stupid.
Jan,
Agree with you. Who cares who thinks Willis needs sensitivity training or whatever, what’s that got to do with anything anyway? I’m aware I’m cluttering up the thread too, fine, that can make me a bad person, I’m ok with that. It seems like Willis can barely open his mouth but six people jump in to tell him what a jerk he is for speaking straight.
Tom In Florida says:
July 23, 2013 at 6:17 am
For a moment I thought that was Leif speaking to Vuk.
Hi Tom
As you could see from my post above I am rehabilitated ‘cyclomaniac’.
btw, Dr.S and I are best of friends.
I’m a little confused by Willis’ claims. I always thought Scafetta was trying to find physical mechanisms that have deterministic cycles. Essentially, there are no “free” parameters. Maybe Scafetta isn’t there yet, but it is one way to move forward on a subject as complex as climate.
Ridiculing this kind of effort is rather strange. Yes, you may point out the current level of the work may be lacking but please tell us what new scientific endeavor does not suffer from the same problem?
Personally, I think the problem is extremely difficult. You have all the problems related to casual chains and momentum of cycles (climate inertia) that complicate the issue even further. However, I can’t support Willis’ critique.
Playing with 18 variables easily gives good results for the past temperature variations, but principally there is no difference to all these unphysical CO2 calculations, only the results for the future are different.
Does anyone else have a problem with any model tuned to hindcast Hadcrut?
As an engineer two things have always jumped out at me about the climate: you can’t have a stable climate for 4 billion years if it had anywhere near the sensitivity modelers have assigned to it – given the diverse range if perturbations the earth has been subjected to in its history you can rest assured the climate has some very powerful negative feedback.
The next being that any arbitrary continuous signal (e.g temperature) can be represented as a furrier series. So unlike a number of other modelers Scafetta is at least trying to address the fact that there are cycles – and likely a lot of them (way way more than 6). But yes his approach is wrong – if you want to represent the anomaly as a series of underlying cycles then do the math and find however many there are – then try to match them to physical phenomenon. However I can think of two big problems with that effort: the climate has been subjected to numerous non cyclical inputs (volcanos, asteroids, etc) and there are non-trivial entropy factors to consider (e.g decay in orbit and rotation, or cooling mantle, or thickening crust).
Trying to model a system as complex as the earth is likely impossible, but you can rest assured there hasn’t been a model produced yet that is anywhere complex enough to be remotely accurate.
@george
Ok. maybe not GOOD satire, but none the less:
“Strange. Am I the only one who did not get the memo about Willis’ promotion to Uber-Censor who may dictate that lines of thought or investigatioon that he does not support may not be posted here?”
From Wiki:
“Satire is a genre of literature, and sometimes graphic and performing arts, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement.[1] Although satire is usually meant to be funny, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit as a weapon.
A common feature of satire is strong irony or sarcasm—”in satire, irony is militant”[2]—but parody, burlesque, exaggeration,[3] juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing.”
Ok, skip the satire. I suspect this is not the place for a discussion on literature. Let’s just say that I fully support what some other commentators have said about Willis’ unbecoming and distasteful tone in this post. My humble apologies to the Willis E. fan club who is clearly out in force… 🙂
More uniformed dribble by Willis. His attitude is condoned and accepted by Watts and mirrors the attitude of those that persecuted anyone who dared question that the Earth was the centre of the universe.
REPLY: You are welcome to disagree, and to offer proof that it is “uninformed dribble”. Step up.- Anthony
@Mark Bofill, July 23, 2013 at 6:31 am
Thanks Mark for your support. Yes, as they say “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen!”. This is a place for grown-up minds who have learnt some genuine humility, not for the infantile and narcissistic. It’s for people who have drunk deeply of the Pierian spring. And few have drunk deeper than our dear Mr Eschenbach. Sure, he can be barbed and prickly. But I would rather fight beside one growling Willis than with a thousand ‘nice’ but ineffectual windbags looking to puff up their egos.
And now I too am guilty of cluttering up this post – sorry Willis!
When I was at school, we were told one day that at around 1pm when most of the planets aligned, there would be earthquakes, tidal waves and chaos. Nothing happened of course. Someone should tell Scafetta that not every celestial cycle has relevance to what goes on on earth.
Also, he hasn’t included that Virgo is in Saturn, so Barrack Obama wont get his bill through congress this month.
One difficulty I see in decomposing climate into cycles (focusing on temperature as the measure) is that there are natural cycles and un-natural cycles.
The natural cycles come from nature. And there are plenty of these.
The un-natural are those that have been introduced through “homogenization” efforts. And there seem to be plenty of these–the perpetrators aren’t saying.
It’s like trying to pick the dirt from a slice of watermelon after dropping it at a picnic.
It is interesting that orbital position ‘theory’ has been used to predict an imminent minimum of solar magnetic cycle activity in 1987. We are of course all aware there as been an abrupt change to the solar magnetic cycle. It appears at this point in time that we are going to observe how solar magnetic cycle changes cause either a Bond cycle or a Heinrich event.
One must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Anomalies (correlation is an anomaly) are often either ignored (because there is no physical explanation for the anomaly) or covered up with an incorrect theory. An example is the creation of dark matter to explain the spiral galaxy rotational anomaly. The true physical explanation as to what causes the spiral galaxy rotational anomaly is connected with this problem.
There is a physical explanation as to why the orbital position of the planets affects the solar magnetic cycle and why the solar magnetic cycle affects the magnetic fields of the planets.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00148211
Solar Physics : 1987, Volume 110, Issue 1, pp 191-210
We employ the JPL long ephemeris DE-102 to study the inertial motion of the Sun for the period A.D. 760–2100. Defining solar orbits with reference to the Sun’s successive close approaches to the solar system barycenter, occurring at mean intervals of 19.86 yr, we find simple relationships linking the inertial orientation of the solar orbit and the amplitude of the precessional rotation of the orbit with the occurrence of the principal prolonged solar activity minima of the current millenium (the Wolf, Spörer, and Maunder minima). The progression of the inertial orientation parameter is controlled by the 900-yr ‘great inequality’ of the motion of Jupiter and Saturn, while the precessional rotation parameter is linked with the 179-yr cycle of the solar inertial motion previously identified by Jose (1965). A new prolonged minimum of solar activity may be imminent.
The solar magnetic cycle changes affect the planet magnetic fields (there is an imprint so to speak on the planets due to solar magnetic cycle changes) which explains the Bond climate cycle (850, 1350, 1850 years between events) and the Heinrich abrupt climate change events (super strong Bond events 8000 to 10000 years between events).
One method of identifying and solving a scientific problem where there are one or more fundamental theory errors is to look for anomalies and then to play with hypotheses to try to make all of the anomalies go away, in that there is a physical explanation for what is observed.
One of the best anomalies to find and solve this problem (solar magnetic cycle causing cyclic planetary magnetic field anomalies) is the anomalous magnetic field orientation of Uranus and Neptune. Very interesting.
Willis,
your great maritime knowledge and experience as seaman is largely missed. The heat for this planet comes from the sun. Any variation in sunray will find some reflection in air temperatures. However, by far the most heat from the sun is taken up by the oceans; some is quickly released to the atmosphere, other is stored temporarily, or for a long time. Once the heat is in the sea, the sea “determine” the release, based on its extreme complex structure, dynamic, and overall mean temperature, which is merely four degree Celsius. Any sun cycle can be traced in air temperature changes. But that will vary according ocean condition, and presumably only by a marginal figure. The sun ray for the earth has been extremely constant over millions of years. The sun has never caused an ice age. The ocean can generate the next ice age, or (any significant) climatic change within a couple of months and years. However, your critic to Dr. Nicola Scafetta’s air temperature cycle assessment should have been as harsh as done.
For the record, I was aware of Dr. Scaffetta’s latest paper several days ago. I chose not to run it because like Willis, I saw the seeds of cyclomania in it. Dr. Scafetta’s motives are noble, but his methods are the issue.
It is tempting to find cycles in data, the human mind looks for such patterns naturally, just as we see shapes in clouds. Certainly there’s nothing wrong with either, but as with predicting what the next cloud will look like based on previous cloud patterns (bunny, dog, bird, flower, angel) so it is equally difficult to predict the next climate pattern based on previous ones.
RealClimate’s show us your code has a bit more weight now. I still think it was a funny joke on his part to reply back that you need to take a class in wavelets.
There is one distinctive sea surface temperature cycle in North Atlantic:
http://blog.sme.sk/blog/560/310249/Natlantic.jpg
It is so profound, it actually drags the whole “global average” with it.
It goes linearly up and down, each period lasting 25-30 years.
Until we do not know, what causes these regular ups and downs, we are nowhere to talk about “climate sensitivity” or whatever. But we can see, that is switched to cold phase in 2006, that it will last probably another 20 years and that the whole AGW BS is only based on warm part of the cycle.
(North Pacific is quite similar).
Planetary “cycles” are just another form of astrology.
bryguyh says:
July 23, 2013 at 6:45 am
I like furrier series.
Would apply especially to the famous lynx-sunspot cycle.
Sorry for this off-topic post.
[snip – sorry doesn’t cut it. We have Tips and Notes for this – Anthony]
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 23, 2013 at 6:53 am
Dribble is not drivel.
Thanks for another excellent post.
Its a timely reminder how easy it is to fit a model to data if you allow to many degrees of freedom, not only IPCC is guilty of that.
Also thanks for the full Version of the Dyson / Fermi/ Neuman story. I only knew Von Neumans claims from before. All budding scientists should make a big mental note not only of von Neumans but also of Fermis words and keep it next to Feynmans advice about scientific honesty.
@GabrielHBay, July 23, 2013 at 6:50 am
There you go again: “My humble apologies to the Willis E. fan club who is clearly out in force”. You may think that’s witty. Perhaps you really are trying to be funny and I’m having a sense of humour failure. Please forgive me then for being so po-faced, but I do take offence at the idea that I’m somehow a Willis groupie. If there’s one thing I suspect would make Willis vomit is the suggestion that he might have a ‘fan club’ here at WUWT.
Why, oh why, is it such a crime in some people’s minds to show genuine respect for another man’s mind? I could after all say the same things about the inimitable Robert Brown, The Good Lord Monckton, Anthony himself, and many others here. I love their minds – big deal, so what? That doesn’t make me some kind of brown-tongue. I guess I just recognize greatness tempered by humility when I see it and want to sit at its feet and learn. That’s a facet of wisdom, not a fault to be ridiculed.
That said, I really do hope that I have got you all wrong and that the hard edge of cynicism I detect in your posts is all down to my own oversensitivity…
…The latest post, however, is simply unbeatable. It has no less than six different cycles, with periods of 9.1, 10.2, 21, 61, 115, and 983 years. …
Two words.
Ptolemy
Epicycles
That is all…
Monckton of Brenchley says:
July 23, 2013 at 3:49 am
For these reasons I should hesitate to dismiss the astronomical approach as astrological.
=========
Indeed. We calculate the ocean tides to great precision using an astrological approach. In contrast, tidal models that use first principles as is done with climate models are hopeless. They cannot deal with the complexity.
Early humans learned to predict the annual cycle of climate long before they understood the process. Again this was done using astrological techniques, building machines (temples) that measured the position of the sun in the heavens.
Have we really progressed so little?
Chaos limits what we can hope to predict from first principles using existing technology. Everything around us moves in cycles. These cycles persist, which suggests they are self-reinforcing and self-organizing. This holds the key to prediction in the face of chaos, as has been demonstrated time and again throughout history.
GabrielHBay says:
“ then interesting lines of though[t] like astronomical cycles, etc, being treated with disdain leaves me, shall one say, edgy.”
Nothing contradicts the alarmist accusation of us being “fake” skeptics as evidenced by our willingness to believe anything that counters CAGW like ardent disagreement among ourselves.
And personally I like sarcasm and enjoyed reading Willis’ take.
Juraj V. says:
July 23, 2013 at 7:07 am
There is one distinctive sea surface temperature cycle in North Atlantic:
http://blog.sme.sk/blog/560/310249/Natlantic.jpg
It is so profound, it actually drags the whole “global average” with it.
You are nearly there:
I would say there two distinctive variable patterns in North Atlantic: sea surface temperature and tectonic movements
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SST-NAP.htm
It is hard to prove that they are somehow related, on the other hand it would be unwise to dismiss the correlation.
The energy is required to alter thermo-haline circulation of an ocean; we are told that effects of CO2 are uncertain, solar variability as TSI insufficient, Scafetta’s ‘planetarisam’ is suppose to work via solar input which is already considered inadequate, etc etc..
Tectonics by all accounts, if and when concentrated on the narrow Arctic-North Atlantic passages e.g. the Fram and Denmark straits certainly could do the required work.
Here are two quotes from WHOI, the world best oceanographer institute:
1. Crucial to this WARM-TO COLD oceanographic choreography is the DENMARK STRAIT Overflow Water (DSOW), , the largest of the deep, overflow plumes that feed the lower limb of the conveyor belt and return the dense water south through gaps in the Greenland-Scotland Ridge.
2. Fram Strait represents the unique deep water connection between the Arctic Ocean and the rest of the world oceans. Its bathymetry controls the exchange of water masses between the Arctic basin and the North Atlantic. The significant heat flux through water mass exchange and sea ice transport, i.e. transport of fresh water and sea ice southwards and transport of warm saline waters northwards, influences the thermohaline circulation at a global scale.
epicycles provided accurate predictions many centuries before the discovery of the elliptical method. both of these methods were discovered before Newton’s law of gravity provided a mechanism.
Without understanding celestial mechanics, the Maya made eerily accurate eclipse forecasts, even for parts of the world of which they had no knowledge. So of course too did the geocentric Ptolemaic system, not shown false until Galileo’s observations of the phases of Venus.
As soon as I hear Jupiter and Saturn as an explanation for use of particular cycles, I immediately think Scientology.
Willis,
Good post.
I kinda’ thought Nicola would get the hint after his first attempt at curve fitting.
Your commentary does seem a bit harsh, though I see little reason to give credit or kudos to someone who adjusts formula parameters until their hindcast matches the data.
On the other hand you’ve made reference to an early occurrence in Dyson’s career, predating his doctorate, I believe.
It is interesting to note the correlation between that example and this, as it seems to me that quite a bit of Dr. Dyson’s work (extensive, diverse and impressive as it is) originates from playing with formulas and just generally screwing around with the math until something jumps out. By spending time doing something fairly similar to what Scafetta is doing, Dyson discovered several important relationships in math and physics that actually work and are important advancements.
Now I don’t know who Nicola Scafetta is and I haven’t his paper. Further, your point on curve fitting is well taken. Your attempt at playing the part of Enrico Fermi to Dyson’s curve fitting adventure is justified. But the statement that ‘you aren’t buying cycles of any kind’ simply flies in the face of objective facts; we begin with the daily cycle, followed closely by the annual cycle. I am not about to suggest a different set of cycles or an alternate formula, but these are the two basic cycles that impact daily temperature and weather. If climate is a ‘long term average’ of daily weather, this is where to begin your understanding and it certainly relates to cyclical physical phenomena.
We also know that there are many more cycles affecting our climate. There is a massive chaotic system interpreting the interaction of these many complex physical processes, many of which have a normal (if not exact) periodic cycle. We don’t have a solid understanding of some of the physical systems which serve as ‘inputs’ to our climate. (I don’t see any proven models for sun-spot cycles, though we have been working for some time to perfect one, and we have good reason to believe they have an effect on our climate.
With the lack of any rationalization of his formula to known mathematical or physical properties, yes, it is clear that Scafetta is grasping at straws. But that does not mean his efforts will not eventually produce meaningful results. My guess is that if he does it enough times, he will begin to see one term or another fits with a known physical cycle, possibly in a way not previously considered. If you do not spend time playing with the math this recognition will never occur. As Dyson said; “just by trial and error, we found out how to do it, and the error was essential.”
In the end, modeling chaos is akin to reading tea-leaves. What Nicola is doing cannot be said to be worse or better than what mainstream academia climate scientists are doing with their GCMs. To the extent that he does not manipulate his data he is behaving better as a scientist. Eventually he just may be the guy who figures out how to reconcile current GCMs to Milankovich cycles and whatever other, currently unknown or poorly understood, physical mechanisms that drive our climate. By this, perhaps our understanding of “the cable, or patch-cord that links the Sun to the Climate System.” will be improved.
The harshest criticism should be reserved for those who throw out such tripe and then hide behind ‘proprietary data’ and undisclosed methodology while casting aspersions on any who dare question their knowledge and proclamations.
It seems to me you are treating Scafetta like Hansen or Mann.
One of these is as ‘the Great and Powerful Oz’, hiding behind a curtain and demanding reverence and awe while reading tea leaves for fame and fortune.
The other is a ‘quack’ scientist, quietly but diligently working through error after error, occasionally asking others to ‘take a look at what he’s found’. Usually he will be shot down. One time he may succeed. One time is enough.
One of these two may eventually improve our understanding of the world in which we live, possibly even by accident. I’d put my money on the quack over the ‘Great and Powerful Oz’, any day.
I leave you with another quote from Jack Eddy; “But I also think that many of the most significant discoveries in science will be found not in but between the rigid boundaries of the disciplines: the terra incognita where much remains to be learned.”
Still, a good post and a thorough dismantling of ‘curve fitting’ as meaningful advancement of our understanding. Hope Scafetta isn’t discouraged by it. Maybe he’ll now take a look at the physics he is trying to model and see something interesting.
Just my $0.02.
By the way; what did you get kicked off Talkshop for? Just curious.
When I read this post, I was shaking my head. First, there is the silly feud between you and Tallbloke. Second, the venom from that feud seems to have fueled your display of ridicule and sarcasm for attacking Dr. Scafetta. Now, constructive criticism is more than appreciated. Usually, you are spot on. However, it is hard to give your critique a fair regard given the distraction.
Willis, this is beneath you. I hope you will see your way to mend fences, extend your hand, and soldier on. We need robust discussion without the silly nonsense.
the insistence of modern science on a mechanism is largely a nonsense. every revolution in science uncovers a new mechanism underlying the previous explanation. the ultimate underlying mechanism can only be truly known at infinity, which is beyond our grasp.
Is the sky blue because of the nature of the nitrogen molecule? Or is it blue because it had to be some color, and it just accidentally turned out to be blue? Or is it blue because the Creator made it so? Can this question ever be resolved? What difference does it make?
the power and proof of science lies in the accuracy of its prediction, independent of cause.
Nice work willis.
I look at the governing equations he creates. They are all dimensionally incorrect. That means regardless of how well they fit the data, they do not express the physics.
Anyway.
Thought folks might enjoy this
I don’t care what anyone says but this big lump of rock (some of it molten) that goes round the bigger lump(?) of thermonuclear hydrogen that has other big lumps of rock (and gas) going round it at intervals of 88 days, 243 days, 365 days (us), 687 days, 11.86 years, 29.5 years….and I forget how long it takes Uranus and Neptune to go around…Anyway, all this cyclical motion must have an effect on the grand scheme of things. And you can’t deny it. Just how much of an effect it has I have no idea.
Cycles are caused by things going around other things.
I don’t kno why anything would go around another thing though.
Anyway. That’s the layman’s explanation for y’all…
It’s a shame to read such pseudo science nonsense critique from Willis Eschenbach in this blog. None of his arguments are valid scientific arguments. All fallacies or junk or still wrong.
Any scientist can see in the graph Dr. Roy Spencer has hold up with his hands in the video hearing, twice an oscillation of about 900 years in the temperature reconstruction of the last 2000 years. Because such periods do not come out of nothing it is a common thinking, that (i) this period must have a geometric structure and (ii) it must have a physical process which controls the heat. But until the physical process is unknown, this makes the geometric structure not untrue. We dammed have to search for the mechanism, but not to discredit a persons work because there is no mechanism explained.
The argument given related to Fermi is an argument for theoretical physics and doesn’t holds for empirical research of climate frequencies of doubtful amplitudes and doubtful time scale calibration in the time range of 10000 years to month’s. It is not possible to put all functions and effects in one formula. There is no single formula to calculate the tide height correct with a precision of 10 cm; it takes a lot of syntetic Suns and Moons because of functons of the cycles,
To reject comments because of the authority is not a method of science, it is ignorance in a case, were the author has no idea what geometries are behind the temperature frequencies and functions. This blog is not a scientific blog, it is a blog were you can give personal comments about climate and climate change. If Dr. Scafetta has analysed some 20 parameter, that does not mean that this has no scientific basis; each temperature frequency can be analysed in power and frequency or frequencies, if the function is not simple a sine function.
This method is not simple ‘curve fitting’ to geometric function in a mathematic formula of many terms, as Anthony claims. It is an empiric way to come near to the climate frequencies reconstructed in the records. I have done such a parameter fitting in a magneto-optical material, based on the knowledge of the geometry of optical oscillators: http://doormann.tripod.com/jap6871990.
It is no secret here that analysed real geometric solar tide functions can be used to simulate the global climate.
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/solar_tides_800.gif
You can compare this function with the Fig. 3 A in the paper of Dr. Scafetta.
Because the power strengths of the temperature frequencies are following an inverse square root function of the tide frequency, this indicates that there is Kepler’s third law involved, which is not invalid at far distances like Sedna, which is a times factor 1000 away from the Sun as the Earth.
Slow down.
V.
‘It seems to me you are treating Scafetta like Hansen or Mann.?
Well Scafetta acts like Mann
When Steve McIntyre asked for Scafettas code, Scafgetta refused and turned the whole matter into a game.
When I asked for the code. Flat refusal.
Even Scafetta co author http://heartland.org/craig-loehle says that he wishes Scafetta would share code, but Scafetta continues to play the “mann” game and the “Jones” game.
Anyone with any ounce of integrity who fought with us to get data and code released by hansen, jones, mann and others should tell scaffetta to stop his childish nonsense and post
A) the code he used
B) the data he used
Not links, not descriptions, not arm waving attacks on the people who want to audit or build on his work. he needs to post the data and the code.
Until then folks like ferd should stop giving lectures on how science works. And in my opinion, WUWT should stop promoting Scafettas stuff.
Willis and Anthony and I disagree about a lot. But access to code and data is fundamental. You have to show your work, the ACTUAL WORK, and not merely descriptions of your work
Willis writes:
“Are there cycles in the climate? Yes, there are cycles. However, they are not regular, clockwork cycles like those of Jupiter and Saturn. Instead, one cycle will appear, and will be around for a while, and then disappear to be replaced by some longer or shorter cycle.”
Precisely, and that is not cycles as such, but an event series. The only fairly regular pulse is the sunspot cycle.
Anthony, I really do not understand why you have deleted my innocuous submissions from being posted here. If you cannot be open in the regulation of these comments then I shall refrain from wasting my time on composing comments for its admin to block. You must have a super-sensitive comment guideline? I’ll look over it, or I’ll just spark some discussion on Joanne Nova’s blog instead, who openly welcomes these sorts of off-topic discussions regarding AGW.
GabrielHBay says:
July 23, 2013 at 3:53 am
Gabriel, I can tell you that you may be the only one who didn’t notice the “Please” at the start of that request. Here’s a tip. When a man ASKS, not orders but asks you to do something, and says “Please”, that’s called a “polite request”. If you call it censorship, people will scratch their heads and wonder.
All the best,
w.
On cyclomania: http://www.leif.org/research/AGU%20Fall%202011%20SH34B-08.pdf
Ulric Lyons says:
July 23, 2013 at 8:20 am
The only fairly regular pulse is the sunspot cycle.
No. The frequency of the sun spot number is not constant. The frequency shift is in correlation to the global temperature (Yamal data)
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/sunspot_tides.
V.
There is no Earthly reason for the major shifts in climate over the long term from ice age to interglacial over and over again on a somewhat regular basis according to palioclimatic data. I have concluded that there must be solar or other cosmic (Milky Way or larger scale astronomical) influences behind these major shifts. It also seems to me that there probably a is solar basis for the moderate scale shifts that lead to “little ice age” events. It is my hope that the astronomers and climatologists will work together in the decades ahead to understand these cause and effects and the means of energy transfer to make create these climatic influences by astronomical events. Many climatologists have dropped there eyes in dismisal when I have suggested all of this. None the less, I hold on to the idea that the answer is in the stars….
well; i do agree, he should focuse on finding out if there are periods…
too many parameters to do do forcecast
“One way, and this is the way I prefer, is to have a clear physical picture of the process that you are calculating. The other way is to have a precise and self-consistent mathematical formalism. You have neither.”
That is an either/or situation. When fitting observed data to a Fourier type harmonic, the statistical significance of each factor depends on the ratio of factors to degrees of freedom. So we may have a lot more confidence with lots more data and fewer factors than the other way. With regard to observed cycles, the measured precision of a cycle depends on the number of self-consistent cycles that are observed within a time frame. A statistically significant cycle that is longer than the time frame is not precise and is only slightly better as a predictor than a linear trend. I suggest that since radiation is essentially a “line of sight, speed of light” process, we should be using hourly met and CO2 data at different sites when analyzing changing mass and energy balances. There are too many assumptions “fudge factors” involved in the global models.
sorry, correct URL:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/sunspot_tides.gif
V.
http://www.webofstories.com/play/freeman.dyson/94;jsessionid=824C94DD263980B74AFB76282A33B896
This discusses how many free parameters are OK for a match, but more important what is the physical basis for the simulation. I think this discussion pretty much summarizes the discussion here
Leif at 08:42.
That I have to ingest. Logarigmic time onthe x-axis. Cool.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
July 23, 2013 at 3:49 am
Well, I wasn’t sure if I should write about this, but I guess I’m glad I did … not sure where to start here.
Christopher, you know that I’m a very big fan of yours. However, in this case you are supporting pseudoscience.
First, one cannot “test it in the simplest way” as you suggest. I spoke in the head post in a bit of detail about how you have to test these kinds of claims, by withholding half the dataset during the fitting so that you can use this later for testing. Scafetta has not done this to my knowledge. (Neither have the climate models, but that’s a different question)
Next, his cycle lengths are neither astronomical nor astrological. They are arbitrary parameters, fitted to the data. They are picked solely because they work. This should be evident from the fact that in some of his papers he uses 20 and 60 year cycles, and in others he uses 21 and 61 year cycles.
Next, I’ve never seen anyone other than Herschel find a correlation between grain prices and sunspots. Someone might have done it, but I’ve not seen it. In part that’s why citing work from 1801 is a bit sketchy. Many people, myself included, have looked at sunspot cycles to see what they correlate with. The answer is … not much. Occasionally someone finds some correlation, but often when you example it, the correlation is with some arbitrary cycle length like 11 or 21 years, and not with the actual sunspot cycle lengths.
But you delude yourself badly if you think that Scafetta is using sunspot cycles or anything like them. Scafetta is using sine waves. Sunspot cycles do not resemble sine waves at all. Their shape is different, and more to the point, the cycle lengths are greatly irregular. They vary from nine years to 50% more than that, 13.7 years.
Here’s the thing. If you want to compare to sunspot cycle lengths, you have to use the actual sunspot cycle lengths. You can’t use their average length, the growing grain isn’t responding to the average length.
As a result, if you talk about sunspot cycles, you are not talking about Scafetta’s work, and vice versa. Not only that, but “10.6 to 11 years” is nowhere near the values of the sunspot cycle, it goes from 9.0 to 13.7 years …
Mmm … as you are the acknowledged expert in these matters, let me draw your attention to the “tu quoque” nature of your argument about tunable parameters. Yes, the climate models have too many. But at least they have the advantage of being in some sense a representation of a known physical reality.
Scafetta has no less than twenty totally arbitrary tunable parameters, and no connection to any known physical mechanism. So I fear that justifying his parameters by saying “but they do it too” is a known logical fallacy.
But sure, put his predictions in your index. To date, he’s given us four different predictions, based on different combinations of the following cycle lengths in years: 9.1, 9.98, “10-11”, 10.2, 10.9, 11.86, 20, 21, 60, 61, 115, and 983 years.
So … which prediction do you plan to use? Will you use 20 years or 21 years as your cycle? Heck, why not make a “meta-prediction”, and include them all?
I am truly sorry to see you give this kind of nonsense any credence, my friend. It is not astronomy, the cycles don’t match. And I’m not saying it’s astrology, it’s not even that.
It’s pure numerology, as meaningful as giving the letters in your name each a number, and then adding up the numbers to predict the future.
My very best to you, and dang it, now I have to go see if I can replicate Herschel’s work. My thanks for your contribution to this post, and to the climate debate in general. Keep fighting the good fight, it’s always marvelous to watch you in action.
w.
vukcevic says:
July 23, 2013 at 4:29 am
Right. You have the actual real cycle numbers, and so the problem with Scafetta is just that he used the wrong numbers … vuk, I’m going to leave you to fight that out with Scafetta. He says 60 (or 61) years, and you say “64-65” years … go at it, guys.
This is why I’d said “Please don’t write in to say that although Nicola is wrong, you have the proper combination of cycles, based on your special calculations.” You’re debating with the wrong guy. Go over to tallblokes and put your case to him directly, I’m sure Nicola can give you chapter and verse about why “64-65 years” is absolutely and undeniably wrong.
w.
There is a much more scientific way that we express what Willis is saying and we say it over and over again “Correlation does not imply causation”.
You can take it to the absurd and say for example “the lack of pirates is causing global warming”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikaandersen/2012/03/23/true-fact-the-lack-of-pirates-is-causing-global-warming/
That’s the stupidity that Enrico Fermi was describing to Freeman Dyson in the story.
Many of the comments don’t get the message that even if Dr. Scafetti could match global warming perfectly it means absolutely nothing as does the correlation between lack of pirates and global warming, how we would we know that does not come about by pure chance like the match between pirates and global warming.
What Scafetti is doing is not even science and Willis has correctly identified that fact … don’t shoot the messenger … science demands that you link correlations thru a solid mechanism.
The problem for Scafetti is there is no mechanism to link astral cycles especially of ridiculously small planetary bodies versus massive earth local effects.
@Willis
“Christopher, you know that I’m a very big fan of yours. However, in this case you are supporting pseudoscience.”
You are absolutely correct Willis he is and it doesn’t seem to have dawned on him along with many of the others comments.
Sad really.
Willis,
One the things that you has to be learned in life is to get to know and understand the idea that you are criticizing. Your post shows me that you have not made that attempt. It is full of paper-tiger arguments which are used to make you look as though you have done your home work. You have not.
You are correct in pointing out that a plethora of adjustable constants can make any model fit the data. Point taken. However, there are many good reasons [some given by Lord Monckton above] as to why research like Nicola’s should be encouraged.
Basically, what Nicola’s heuristic model assumes that the Earth’s climate is influenced by external factors that are related to the overall level of solar activity. Given that there is some peer-reviewed research that indicates the possibility that the overall level of solar activity may be influenced by planetary torques and tides, Nicola (and others) are taking the logical next step, and that is to look for a connection between the long-term cycles in the Earth’s climate system and long-term cycles in the planetary toques and tides.
[You can read about the Tidal-Toquing model which is explained here:
http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/why-vej-tidal-torquing-model.html
http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/further-confirmation-of-vej-tidal.html
or you can read some per-reviewed science at:
J. A. Abreu1, J. Beer, A. Ferriz-Mas, K. G. McCracken, and F. Steinhilber
Is there a planetary influence on solar activity?
A&A 548, A88 (2012)]
Nicola has identified what he believes are the most important cycles that may [and I emphasis the word “may”] play a role in the interaction between the Sun and Earth’s climate.
Nicola is not the first person to point out these potential external forcing cycles. He is just he current lightening rod for those who want to show their unease with new and/or alternative ideas.
Here is a link to a post that I believe gives support to Nicola’s work:
http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/is-this-planetary-signature-in-our.html
Ian Wilson says:
July 23, 2013 at 9:45 am
He is just he current lightening rod for those who want to show their unease with new and/or alternative ideas.
This is not a new idea. It goes back to 1852 and has not gained acceptance because it has not worked and not advanced science.
pokerguy says:
July 23, 2013 at 5:42 am
You find my work “extremely distasteful”, and yet here you are reading my work … why am I so popular with people who want to tell me that I’m doing it all wrong?
pokerguy, perhaps you’re not aware of the backstory. Nicola and I have a history. I started out by asking him simple questions, like what a cycle of “10-11” years means. Here was my first question to him, plus a bonus question, and they are important questions:
He curtly and rudely refused to answer those and other questions. Many of them, including those simple questions I just quoted above, he has never answered. Instead, he kept telling me I should read his entire opus of work to find the answers … sorry, not going to happen. I’m not wading through miles of mire looking for a snipe. A simple question deserves a simple answer, and he has consistently refused to answer questions about his work, other than softball pitches from his followers. Instead, he rapidly descended into personal attacks. Here’s my comment from 2012, when someone asked why I wasn’t more polite to Nicola. I replied:
So yeah, we have some history.
Finally, anyone using twenty tuned parameters to do some kind of curve fitting, without the elementary precaution of only using half the data for fitting so you have the other half for verification, is practicing pseudoscience. It is a meaningless curve-fitting exercise.
What he has done is a kind of manual Fourier reconstruction of the climate signal. But as Fourier showed, any arbitrary signal can be decomposed into a set of sine waves. And that’s all Scafetta has done, decomposed some signal into sine waves. Are you impressed by that kind of pseudoscience? Because I’m not.
The problem, and the reason I decided to write this post, is that it is plausible enough pseudoscience to take in folks like Monckton of Brenchley, who should know better. So yes, I’m as scathing about this kind of garbage as I can be. I don’t wish for this site or the skeptical movement in general to be associated with Scafetta’s curve fitting exercise in any shape or form. I want to disavow it in the strongest possible terms.
All of the best,
w.
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 23, 2013 at 9:20 am
Monckton of Brenchley says:
July 23, 2013 at 3:49 am
Re: Herschel, sunspots & grain prices:
http://www.cxoadvisory.com/3642/calendar-effects/does-the-sunspot-cycle-predict-energy-and-grain-prices/
However, 20th & 21st century grain production & pricing differ in significant ways from the early 19th century British situation. Weather still matters of course, but inputs such as chemical fertilizers, petroleum-based cultivation practices, widespread irrigation, possibility of alternative crops, fallowing, government intervention & a global grain market, among other factors, could muddy the signal, if any.
GabrielHBay says:
July 23, 2013 at 5:54 am
Gabriel, I do like the description of “a tad too warmist”, although I’m not sure how it applies to me. However, if you think that Dr. Scafetta’s work is astronomically based, please disabuse yourself of that belief immediately. His cycles have nothing to do with astronomy, they are picked because they fit. As Vukcevic commented on an earlier thread:
Three synodic cycles of Jupiter and Saturn is 59.5766 years. Scafetta sometimes uses 60 years, and sometimes 61. His claim of an astronomical origin for those numbers is falsified by the data.
He’s just picking numbers, Gabriel.
w.
richard verney says:
July 23, 2013 at 5:58 am
What is it about the story of the elephant that you don’t understand, Richard? This is a meaningless curve-fitting exercise, and the number of free parameters turns it into a joke. If you don’t see the humor, read the story of the elephant again.
w.
John West says:
July 23, 2013 at 6:00 am
As you are the first person to mention Milankovitch cycles in this thread, I have no idea what you are referring to. If it was something I said, please quote my words.
Thanks,
w.
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 23, 2013 at 10:01 am
I don’t wish for this site or the skeptical movement in general to be associated with Scafetta’s curve fitting exercise in any shape or form. I want to disavow it in the strongest possible terms.
There are several other cyclomaniacs on this site pushing similar [or worse] nonsense. And I agree that this association harms the skeptical movement. Once you have been stung by the cyclomania bug, there is no way back and no salvation for you. That bug rears its stinger in every generation. A good example is the recent claims by Abreu et al. You can judge for yourself http://www.leif/research/Comment-Planetary-Peaks.pdf
http://www.leif.org/research/Comment-Planetary-Peaks.pdf
LdB says:
July 23, 2013 at 9:28 am
There is a much more scientific way that we express what Willis is saying and we say it over and over again “Correlation does not imply causation”.
The problem with this saying is that some correlations do not imply causation, but are recognized as physical laws.
There is a strong correlation between the square root of the half axis of a moving planet and the cubic root of the rotating time of the planet, as J. Kepler has found out, in his third law. but there is no causation implied, no force, no acting.
If the definition of causation is: “ in classical (Newtonian) mechanics a cause may be represented by a force acting on a body, and an effect by the acceleration.” , the movement of planets is then without any mechanical causation.
It is the same with moving electrons, they need no force to oscillate.
Same with the angular momentum in the solar system. There is no force acting as a cause.There is only a timeless exchange of angular momentum, without any following acting.
But the main nonsense is that it is of no worth to stale was in not. Science is to recognize coherence, what ever it is.
Time is not a force. Time is not an observable in physics. That means a causality as process of following (in time) is nonsense..
V.
bryguyh says:
July 23, 2013 at 6:45 am
Thank you, sir. That’s exactly what started me on my entire investigation into the climate. I wanted to understand, not the changes in the temperature that were occupying everyone else, but what to me was the remarkable stability of the temperature at all timescales. The short answer I found was that emergent phenomena control the climate, spring up when it’s hot to prevent overheating, and keep the temperature stable.
But I digress …
w.
Steven Mosher says:
July 23, 2013 at 8:09 am
Thanks, Steven. Interesting thought, and one I hadn’t considered. My high school chemistry teacher made us always write out in full and cancel out all dimensions in our equations … a very valuable lesson that’s easy for me to forget.
w.
Steven Mosher says:
July 23, 2013 at 8:18 am
I agree completely. I couldn’t get him to answer simple questions, much less provide what he should provide.
I had the same concern about even bringing it up here, Steven. I hate giving it any more publicity. But after I read positive reviews of it on the web, by people who should know better, I realized that I couldn’t just ignore it.
Actually, I suspect that the three of us don’t disagree as much as it sometimes seems. And we definitely agree on the necessity for showing your work, how you actually derived your results. Without that, it’s just handwaving.
w.
LdB says:
July 23, 2013 at 9:31 am
@Willis
“Christopher, you know that I’m a very big fan of yours. However, in this case you are supporting pseudoscience.”
You are absolutely correct Willis he is and it doesn’t seem to have dawned on him along with many of the others comments.
The problem with Willis argument is that ‘pseudescience’ is not to be demonstrated (as truth) in terms of science and philosophy. Nobody can show pseudoscience because it has no existence. You only can argue with valid counter arguments, in that you have to argue why arguments are invalid.
V.
milodonharlani says:
July 23, 2013 at 10:06 am
Many thanks for that interesting link, great slothful one. (Which is not an insult, but a compliment on his screen name.) I rather suspected that the correlation hadn’t held up.
w
Willis Eschenbach says:
”As you are the first person to mention Milankovitch cycles in this thread, I have no idea what you are referring to. If it was something I said, please quote my words.
Gladly:
“I’m not buying cycles of any kind, motorcycles, epicycles, solar cycles, bicycles, circadian cycles, nothing.”
So, being a Southerner (smart@ss), I just had to come up with a “cycle” that pretty much everybody agrees does affect climate. FWIW I don’t disagree with what you’re saying and yes the work is being misrepresented in its scope but on the other hand looking for cycles is not necessarily a bad thing. He might stumble upon something that ends up making sense to someone that then puts the mechanism to the cycle. If the approach were turned around and presented as something along the line of ‘these periodicities are discernible within the climate record let’s try to figure out why’ would you be more accepting, assuming simple questions were answered of course? From my own line of work it was the investigation into the periodicity of chemical characteristics that lead to (obviously) the periodic table and ultimately our understanding of quantum physics.
This site accuses WUWT & Willis of committing pseudo-science:
http://principia-scientific.org/supportnews/latest-news/247-the-relentless-pseudo-science-of-wuwt.html
IMO, the scientific method requires making testable, falsifiable predictions. The issue with the Scafetta paper seems to be whether this method requires the predictor to understand the science behind the prediction. As per Volker Doorman above, Kepler fit an elliptical curve to Tycho’s observations of Mars, showing the assumption of perfectly circular orbits made by both the geocentrists & Copernicus to be false. Yet Kepler didn’t know the mechanism behind these data.
Scafetta’s repeated attempts at curve-fitting might well, IMO, serve a useful scientific purpose, if it leads to identifying candidate physical phenomena with cycles matching whatever he comes up with. More concerning to me is his apparent reluctance to share data, if that’s the right word for his calculations, numbers & assumptions. Worse than worthless psuedo-science? Maybe. Access to underlying figures would help decide.
REPLY: Guess what? We don’t care. They aren’t worth responding to. One of these days those folks will wake up to who is running that outfit. – Anthony
Brilliant post! Thank you!
Volker Doormann says:
July 23, 2013 at 10:40 am
Re: Pseudoscience.
This site accuses Willis of practicing relentless “pseudoscience”, along with WUWT:
http://principia-scientific.org/supportnews/latest-news/247-the-relentless-pseudo-science-of-wuwt.html
I concur that Kepler’s elliptical curve-fitting to Tycho’s observations of Mars is apt to the discussion of Scafetta’s paper, but would add that his not sharing code is unscientific, if not pseudoscientific.
Does a curve-matcher necessarily have to understand the science behind his number-crunching? Or does making falsifiable predictions based upon it suffice? A good match could possibly lead to identifying candidate explanatory physical phenomena. Or not. The exercise may not be pseudoscientific, assuming that appellation is anything more meaningful than a nasty name.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s a debate was going on essentially between the Eastern world, mainly the Soviets and China, who were advocating the cyclical view and the Western world, particularly the US and Britain who were pushing chaos theory.
The Soviets have long studied cycles as they relate to economies, particularly food production. The most famous is the Kondratieff, which is a favourite with many who play the stock market.
http://www.kondratieffwavecycle.com/kondratieff-wave/
The Western world promoted the Chaos theory that there were no cycles or patterns.
The difference between the two philosophies was incorrectly judged to be a political difference and part of the Cold War. In fact, it was the same discussion raised by Willis’ analysis of Scafetta’s work.
I used to tease the weather forecasters saying they better hope chaos theory was correct so they had an excuse for their inaccurate forecasts. Of course, the difference defines one of the most misunderstood issues, especially by the public, namely between weather and climate. Anthony has many articles about the misuse or deliberate abuse of the difference, such as this one.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/13/climate-science-and-nuclear-weapons-research-another-conflation-of-weather-and-climate/
There are cycles. The problem is we don’t know how many or the underlying causes. It also appears there is chaos, as in the non-linear nature of the weather. I recall how the issue was complicated when Landscheidt introduced cyclical influences beyond the close solar system. Other factors that appeared included variation in Length of Day (LOD) or the orbit of our solar system around the Milky Way among many others.
I discussed the cycle versus chaos issue with Hubert Lamb and determined that his reason for setting up the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was again proving critical to any potential understanding and resolution. In his autobiography he explains
“…it was clear that the first and greatest need was to establish the facts of the past record of the natural climate in times before any side effects of human activities could well be important.”
In our discussion he agreed this was also essential to the cycles/chaos determination.
Of course, we have less data now than when we discussed this in the early 1980s. What data we have has been adjusted or deleted to the point where most of it is of little value. The distraction was primarily due to a change in the role of the CRU under the Directorship of Wigley and latterly Jones. Again as Lamb notes in his autobiography,
“My immediate successor, Professor Tom Wigley, was chiefly interested in the prospects of world climates being changed as result of human activities, primarily through the burning up of wood, coal, oil and gas reserves…” “After only a few years almost all the work on historical reconstruction of past climate and weather situations, which first made the Unit well known, was abandoned.”
A good illustration of the failures of the IPCC to recognize cycles is the lack of inclusion of Milankovitch.
All this is further support of my argument that the CRU, the IPCC and the politicizing of climate science has set us back 30 years. Let’s push for more and better data before we even take sides in the debate. The trouble is the abuse and use of climate science for a political agenda and the failed projections of the IPCC are reducing the willingness to fund such crucial research.
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 23, 2013 at 10:41 am
milodonharlani says:
July 23, 2013 at 10:06 am
You’re welcome. It’s still possible that in a world closer to a state of nature, sunspots might correlate causitively (if that’s a word) with grain prices. But that appears not to be the case for the contemporary US.
Mylodon, as you know, is a genus of ground sloth from Patagonia, discovered by Darwin & instrumental to his developing theory. The prolific comparative anatomist & paleontologist Harlan found a fossil jaw of Paramylodon in North America a few years later.
Tim Ball says:
July 23, 2013 at 11:02 am
Hear, hear!
I chime in when you put your foot in it, so I need to chime in when you hit the nail directly on the head. You hit the nail directly, forcefully, and completely on the head on this one.
You may enjoy a couple of comics: http://xkcd.com/687/ and http://xkcd.com/1047/ come to mind.
An E Cat-powered three-wheeler might be less bulky and easier to maintain.
While I’m not a fan of Scafetta’s usual cyclomania, I did think his recent paper on sea-levels was interesting. Specifically I liked his use of “Multi-Scale Rate Analysis” plots. I adapted this method to compare HadCRUT4 and sea-level, with results that I found interesting:
https://sites.google.com/site/climateadj/multiscale-trend-analysis—hadcrut4
I agree with Willis that the multi-decadal cycles don’t have fixed characteristics, though it is interesting that the current slow down appears to be right on time. Mind you, appearances can be deceiving.
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 23, 2013 at 10:19 am
But that’s not what I see, Willis. On a geological time scale, the past several million years has seen regular cold periods where the temperature declines by 8-10 degrees C, bouncing around as it goes, then after about 100,000 years quickly rises by ~10-12 degrees where it stays for several thousand years before falling off the temperature cliff again.
This contains a temperature graph of the past 420,000 years:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/17/global-warming-climate-change/
I see pronounced periodicity as Ice Ages repeat intersperced with Interglacials, but I don’t see temperature stability (implying a narrow temperature range) “at all timescales”.
Please advise.
In support of and further comments to:
Volker Doormann says:
It’s a shame to read such pseudo science nonsense critique from Willis Eschenbach in this blog. None of his arguments are valid scientific arguments. All fallacies or junk or still wrong.
July 23, 2013 at 8:13 am
William:
P.S. I find other Willis Eschenbach’s articles to be very interesting and informative. I enjoy and find appropriate Willis’ injection from time to time of a little wit into his articles to keep things interesting and to help illustrate points. Thanks and best wishes Willis. William.
William:
The labeling of the fact that there is correlation of planetary orbital changes and solar magnetic cycle changes as ‘astrology’ seems to me to be a bit over the top. There is no logic analysis used to justify using the word ‘astrology’ or to compare planetary orbital influence on the sun with Ptolemy’s earth centered solar model. That seems to me to be very close to name calling which makes any discussion very difficult. i.e. It is implied that we do not have time for that silly idea and in fact we might use our influence and power to crush that silly idea.
Comment:
If anyone who is interested in an astrophysical example of over the top idea killing I would highly recommend Halton Arp’s ‘Seeing Red’ Redshifts, Cosmology, and Academic Science. Curiously the physics of what explains Halton Arp’s set of unexplained anomalies is directly related to how the sun can cause abrupt geomagnetic field changes. Progress on solving what physically causes Arp’s anomalies was delayed for 30 years as Arp was not allowed telescope time and his papers were blocked as discussion and research of the anomalies was a waste of time. 30 years later there are now sets of astronomical connected anomalies (quasar observations, spiral galaxy formation and evolution, large cluster evolution, anomalous hot intergalactic gas, the phenomena that required the creation of both dark matter and dark energy and so on. Only cosmologists are allowed to change to the laws of physics to keep their theory alive.) that are related to Arp’s anomalies.
We all agree there is a physical explanation for ever thing that has and will happen. There are no magic wands. We all agree there are theories that are not correct. We all agree there can be correlation due to chance or there may be one parameter controlling both phenomenon and hence there is correlation but no causal relationship between the two phenomenons. A new incorrect theory (the dragon slayer theory seems to me to be an example of an incorrect theory that is not helpful) is almost as disruptive to advancement as an old completely accepted theory that is incorrect, as the new incorrect theory is used as an examine to automatically label every new or previously rejected theory as cranky, not worthy of even scientific logical discussion. The key issue is logical scientific discussion, give the new or old theory a chance, if there is some possibility it could have legs.
The fact that there are sets of anomalies concerning the glacial/interglacial cycle and abrupt climate changes indicates that there are one or more fundamental assumptions that are incorrect. There is an entire set of peculiar unexplained correlates. Events that should be random are not random.
Something is causing the Bond climate events that occur at a variable interval between events of 850 years, 1350 years, and 1850 years. Roughly every 8,000 to 10,000 years there are super strong Bond events that are called Heinrich events. Something is causing the glacial/interglacial cycle. Something is cause the quasi periodic variance of the solar magnetic cycle.
@Tim Ball The trouble is the abuse and use of climate science for a political agenda and the failed projections of the IPCC are reducing the willingness to fund such crucial research.
I agree. I have noticed the same disastrous trend in conservation biology where the crucial research is not being funded and any changes in wildlife are brushed off as the effects of global warming even in regions where maximum temperatures have declined.
Anthony, may you please add my response here and after Willis article?
*********
First of all, let us start saying that interested readers need to read my paper if they want to know what I say instead of reading Willis’ rants. On my web-site free copies can be downloaded. The paper under analysis is here
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/pdf/Scafetta_EE_2013.pdf
However, other papers were published and there may be a need to read them all to know the details, including the references.
About Willis’s article I see that my paper is not making to sleep somebody, which is a good sign.
But people need to sleep well to write properly.
If not the probability of saying non-senses increases greatly.
It appears that Willis had a nightmare.
Let us start from the easiest thing that demonstrates that Willis have lost some hours of sleep and/or panicking.
1) Willies criticized my Figure 11 and the trigon graph by Kepler by stating
*****
And as you might expect from a man citing Kepler, Scafetta treats scientific information like fine wine—he doesn’t want anything of recent vintage. Apparently on his planet you have to let science mellow for some decades before you bring it out to breathe … and in that regard, I direct your attention to the citation in the bottom center of his Figure 11, “Source: Geophysical Data, J. Biddy (USA) 1978″.
Finally, he highlights the “20 year and 60 year astronomical cycles” in Kepler’s chart at the right. In fact, what he calls the “20 year” cycles shown in Kepler’s dates at the right vary from 10 to 30 years according to Kepler’s own figures shown inside the circle, and what he calls the “60 year astronomical cycles” include cycles from 50 to 70 years.
*****
I have numerous problems with Willis citing my paper. First of all Willis deceives the reader by forgetting that those references such as Kepler model, which was a climatic model, wos referenced in a section dedicated to the ancient understanding of climate change. I reference also Ptolemy and Medieval writers, but Willis did not note it.
Second I never talk about a guy called “J. Biddy.”
Who is J. Biddy, Willis? A subject of your nightmare?
As any reader can easily see by reading my paper I am referencing to “J. A. Eddy” not “J. Biddy”
Willies probably does not know it, but J. Eddy is likely one of the greatest solar physicist of the last 50 years. Here is his profile in Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_A._Eddy
Now, let us talk about Kepler trigon.
There Willies see cycles varying between 10 and 30 year and between 50 and 70 year, instead of 20 and 60 years.
However, on that graph these are the reported dates (written by the hand of Kepler)
first trigon) 1583, 1603, 1623,
second trigon) 1643, 1663, 1683,
third trigon) 1703, 1723, 1743,
fourth incomplete trigon) 1763,
which are the conjunction dates of Jupiter and Saturn.
Where Willis saw in the Kepler’s diagram cycles varying between 10 and 30, and between 50 and 70 I do not know.
Given the above it is evident that Willis did not read my paper and is simply trying to mislead the readers of Anthony’s blog. It would be nice to know if Anthony agrees with Willis on these points.
2) Given the above is not surprising that Willis does not understand the logic of the cycles I am taking about which requires a careful reading of my paper, and some knowledge in physics.
About the “Congenital Cyclomania Redux” for using just 6 harmonics spanning between the decadal to the millennial scales Willis does not know that the logic implemented in my model is essentially equivalent to the harmonic constituent astronomical model used to predict the ocean tides on the Earth where up to 40 (very close) harmonics are used. My 6 harmonic model is a baby in comparison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_tides#Tidal_constituents
I am sure that Willis does not believe in the harmonic constituent astronomical tidal model either which happens to be the most accurate and advanced geophysical model. The only model that actually works in long range predictions.
In addition, Willis accusation that I am using 3 free parameters (amplitude, phase and frequency) for each cycle is false. The cycles parameters are both deduced by the analysis of the data and by a cross-comparison with the astronomical cycles that suggest both the frequency and the phase. In the present paper I made the choice of using oscillations with at most very small adjustments for statistical optimization because many more cycles may be present generating beats.
Look at Figure 7 and 8, and 13. But you need also to read the references of my other papers to understand the physical origin of the cycles.
For example, Willis has not yet understood that the 61-year cycle used in the analysis comes from the beat between the Jupiter-Spring tide (9.93 year) and the Jupiter tide (11.86 year) as explained in my paper.
The only true free parameters are the amplitude of the cycle that need to be calibrated against the temperature data.
The cycle at 10-11 are essentially the solar cycle that is made of a 10, 11 year cycle modulated by the 12 year cycle of Jupiter. I talk about this in another paper, for example.
Scafetta N., 2012. Multi-scale harmonic model for solar and climate cyclical variation throughout the Holocene based on Jupiter-Saturn tidal frequencies plus the 11-year solar dynamo cycle. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 80, 296-311.
The physical meaning of the oscillations I am using is clearly explained in the paper and in its references.
Many other things are omitted by Willis such as that I do tests calibrating my model in 1850-1950 and reconstruct the climatic oscillations from 1950 to 2012, for example. The solar model I propose hindcast major climatic pattern during the last 10,000 years. See for example Figure 13 and also other references. Etc.
So, the interested readers are invited to read my paper.
I thank the numerous readers above that have noted that Willis comments were erroneous and that one of Willis’ problem is personal arrogance, another is ignorance. I still hope that Anthony realizes it.
The issue of climate change is complex. It is evident that my model performs much better than the IPCC models and has been tested on hidcasting capabilities.
It is evident that Willis does not have a better theory of climate change.
Nature will eventually confirm or rebut my theory. Up to now Nature seems to follow it quite well.
I do not claim that the model is complete yet, other cycles are present (in the case of the tides 40 close cycles have been found). The research continues with other peer reviewed papers on science journals.
As it happens, somebody will be convinced sooner and somebody will be convinced at the end, such as Willis.
I agree with many of your points however the tone and ridicule, are all wrong. Feuding is harmful and some attitudes require adjustment. Let’s try to aim a little higher. GK
Willis writes: …. Whenever I’ve thought I have something, as soon as it leaves the training data and starts on the out-of-sample data, it starts to diverge from reality. And of course, the divergence increases over time.
I believe that about sums the problem. It is precisely the same behaviour of model vs reality that led Edward Lorenz to develop the mathematical notion now known as the strange attractors. His account of the frustration and irritation that linear modeling of meteorological phenomena provided is well worth reading.
Nicola Scafetta says:
July 23, 2013 at 12:16 pm
Nature will eventually confirm or rebut my theory. Up to now Nature seems to follow it quite well.
So you claim. But without quantitative assessment. Now, science happens when scientists can build on the work by others. There are many ‘planetary’ claims out there. A new one is that by Abreu et al. Does your claim agree with theirs?
Willis,
Why so much venom. You are better than this.
Willis
“What he has done is a kind of manual Fourier reconstruction of the climate signal. But as Fourier showed, any arbitrary signal can be decomposed into a set of sine waves. And that’s all Scafetta has done, decomposed some signal into sine waves. Are you impressed by that kind of pseudoscience? Because I’m not.”
==========
Perhaps that’s a bit strong. Fourier analysis can produce pretty good results under the right circumstances. For example the ancient Ptolemaic astronomy with its crystal spheres, cycles, and epicycles was also a sort of manual Fourier analysis. And while the physical model couldn’t easily have been more wrong, if you used it for navigation and tried to go from Alexandria to Piraeus, you stood an excellent chance of ending up somewhere near Piraeus rather than at Carthage, Gibraltar or Aleppo. Fourier can be OK — IF THE SITUATION IS IN FACT DOMINATED BY UNDERLYING CYCLIC PHENOMENA.
Fourier has serious practical limitations:
1. It will always give you an answer. Very likely a large family of answers.
2. It will probably give you a very good fit to your data, but that does not — as you point out — prove much. If it didn’t fit, you’d tune it until it did fit (remind you of GCMs?)
3. As a practical matter, there is no way to tell which (if any) family members best fit the future.
Dr. Ball, thanks for your eloquent comments. I agree that there are cycles.
I found the comment of one solar physicist on this subject particularly interesting. He claimed there are actually an infinite number of cycles of the sun – they transpire over periods infinitely (by our standards) long and infinitesimally short, and thus necessarily overlap each other. Some must cancel each other out, Others, such as the ones Leif has made a career of studying, are quite obvious even to laymen such as myself, and their periodicities can be understood and predicted in a human lifetime. The term “cyclomania”, used to denigrate (even inaccurate) theories of cycles is, in my opinion, a bit disingenuous, since we are all looking for the causes of climate, whether they are cyclical or chaotic. It would be a very uncomfortable irony if the skeptical writers of WUWT overlooked (some of the) actual, historical causes of climate change just because they fall under the heading of cyclical.
A governing mechanism that kicks in and causes thunderstorms when the ocean surface overheats is cyclical, since, by some accounts, it appears to “turn on” during the heat of the day, and gradually turn off, as evening approaches.
Scafetta stuck out his neck in 2011 with predictions. I really would like to see how he’s done 20 months later. If he’s done well, let’s cut him a break. If not, then he needs to explain why not. (The 2012 update to his 2011 post is here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/11/scafetta-prediction-widget-update/)
If it agrees with hadcrut at any point, it cannot be correct!
I’d like to see an ocean cycle or two, or three. For example, where does the warm water from the Mediterranean Sea go after entering the Eastern Atlantic Ocean? What about the water from the Amazon Basin? There are many other on-Earth things that seem to get little attention but might have influence on things that are indexed as of climatic interest, such as the AMO or ENSO.
—–
Regarding the research questioned with this post: Turn the law of the instrument (aka Maslow’s hammer) around; namely
If you have a nail, everything about you begins to look like a hammer. I’ve pounded nails with a tennis racket, a boot, a wine bottle, rocks, a pipe wrench, pliers, and more. Do I need to list 20 to make the point. They all sort-of do the job but when working with nails a modern claw hammer is what you want. Hammer head meets nail – – there is a clear physical picture of what is desired.
Willis, I think, rightly claims that Dr. Scafetta takes the surface temperature of Earth and looks about for anything or many things to hit it, without reason.
——————
Willis is banned at Tallbloke’s – how funny; made my day.
To give Willis a more technical response, that he may not understand because too physical but many readers may understand, the climate system is essentially a complex system regulated by some set of differential equations. To solve differential equations one need the boundary conditions.
In the case od the climate the boundary conditions are provided by the forcings coming from the space plus some other internal forcing such as volcano activity and GHG variation.
The forcings coming from the space contain necessarily a complex harmonic component due to the fact that the moon, the Sun and the planets are moving around. Some of the harmonics are those that I use.
If a system described by set of differential equations has a boundary condition that contain an harmonic complex component this harmonic component will be reflected also in the solution of the set of differential equations, that is in our case in the climate system,
So, my theory, which was in principle already advocated by science giants such as Ptolemy and Kepler and Newton, and constitute the traditional way to understand climate change has nothing strange or wrong, in principle.
Willis is just panicking and my papers are just making him to have some severe nightmares, we need to understand the guy.
In any case, for the interested readers I have made an interesting graph comparing my model with the IPCC models here
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model_1
Anthony, may you please show my new figure here? [Done. -w]
You may also show it in a more interesting post.
I’ve been visiting this site since nearly day one. Havent read many of the comments above but would like to add that I also find the Willis arrogance really distasteful. And at the end of the day you need to convince common people like me to believe in what you are saying.
60 years: kinda like three times the synodic period of Jupiter/Saturn. Why three times? Why not?
Third Harmonic?
A sine-wave component having three times the fundamental frequency of a complex signal.
For the genuine science in the subject of climate cycles, there is the Cambridge University Press book, Climate Cycles Real Or Imaginary? Second Edition c2003 by William James Burroughs.
Bob Shapiro says: July 23, 2013 at 1:14 pm
“Scafetta stuck out his neck in 2011 with predictions. I really would like to see how he’s done 20 months later. If he’s done well, let’s cut him a break. If not, then he needs to explain why not. (The 2012 update to his 2011 post is here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/11/scafetta-prediction-widget-update/)”
Actually my forecast is working very well. See here
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model_1
my updated widget is here
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/scafetta-forecast.png
Anthony, please, show the figure of my updated widget.
For the benefit of the readers. So that they may form also a right opinion about Willis post.
It appears to me that climate is cyclic on most if not all time scales. The cycles are not always or even mainly regular, as chaotic elements also influence its changes.
The opening of deep sea channels around Antarctica at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary isolated the continent & started formation of ice sheets there. The Isthmus of Panama altered oceanic circulation, initiating the quasi-regular Pleistocene glacial-interglacial cycles, modulated by orbital mechanics. So clearly, there’s a role for geography, geology & oceanography in controlling climate.
There also appear to be longer-term icehouse/hothouse climatic cycles. You don’t have to ascribe to Svensmark’s cosmoclimatology to recognize the cyclic nature of at least some climatic phenomena. The icehouse portions of the mostly torrid Mesozoic didn’t develop continental ice sheets, as during the Paleozoic (at least twice) & Cenozoic, but their signal is still there.
Climatology is still in its infancy. Good data need to be gathered & testable hypotheses erected thereupon. But what is known IMO shows that CO2 is not the main driver of climate forcings on Earth, or even a very important one.
milodonharlani says: ….
What you say is absolutely correct. One just need some little objectivity.
To the other readers, do not trust Willis post.
Just read my paper instead
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/pdf/Scafetta_EE_2013.pdf
The doubts of many readers are actually explained in my paper quite in details.
I cannot past and copy the entire paper content here. You just need to take some time to read the paper that is quite informative.
John West says:
July 23, 2013 at 10:43 am
Thanks for the clarification, John, and clearly many climate phenomena are cyclical, including days and seasons. And the Milankovitch cycles. And I’ve spent a lot of time looking for astronomical correlations with any features of the climate … unfortunately, they are weak, few, and far between. As usual with the climate, the noise seems to be larger than the signal (if one exists).
My point was that the Milankovitch cycles are real astronomical cycles, while Scafetta is just picking numbers. You can’t just choose cycles because they work, that’s curve fitting.
All the best,
w.
G. Karst says:
July 23, 2013 at 12:22 pm
Yeah, you’re likely right, but his kind of pseudoscience pushes my buttons. It’s exacerbated by his refusal to share his data or his calculations or to answer questions about his work. But I likely should have gone easier on the poor man.
w.
If Dr. Scaffeta wants to make his code and data available for replication, I’ll be glad to feature his work in a top post.
To Willis, who says:
“You can’t just choose cycles because they work”
Yet, the scientific method only requires that a proposed model works.
Sorry Willies, your own comments prove that at the end you do not have arguments.
You are just handwaving.
And you are acting out of arrogance and malevolence to mislead the readers of this blog about a scientific research that in truth you do not understand.
Science is not done as you think, Willis. Learn to be humble when you are not able to understand things.
By the way, I am not doing curve fitting. Read my paper well before criticizing them with a list of non-senses.
Nicola,
Thanks for the link to your paper. I’ve read through it a couple of times and am still thinking it through.
I would like to ask you a few question though that may assist me in understanding your paper:
1) From the arguments I read in Section 7 ‘PLANETARY CONTROL ON SOLAR AND CLIMATE CHANGE OSCILLATIONS THROUGHOUT THE HOLOCENE’, I walk away with the impression that the specific physical mechanisms for what you propose are unknown, since you list some possibilities there, is this correct?
2) If this is correct, how did you select the specific astronomical cycles to use? Was it a matter of finding those that matched frequency elements you were looking for, or was there another method?
3) Is the claim that you refuse to share the data, calculations, and code you used true? If so, would you explain why? If not, would you make these available?
Thank you,
Mark Bofill
Anthony Watts says:
July 23, 2013 at 2:39 pm
“If Dr. Scaffeta wants to make his code and data available for replication, I’ll be glad to feature his work in a top post.”
Anthony, you talk as if I run a mysterious GCMs made of thousand equations and mysterious data. The equation of my model is very simple and is Eq. 7 in the paper.
Sum six harmonics listed in eq. 1-6 and add the radiative component (which is a first approximation of GHG, aerosol and volcano component) as explained in the paper which s based on the CMIP5 ensemble mean.
The HadCRUT4 record you can download from their website.
The model is a good first order approximation
I am making an exel file asked by Christopher Monckton
milodonharlani says:
July 23, 2013 at 10:58 am
Volker Doormann says:
July 23, 2013 at 10:40 am
Re: Pseudoscience.
Does a curve-matcher necessarily have to understand the science behind his number-crunching? Or does making falsifiable predictions based upon it suffice? A good match could possibly lead to identifying candidate explanatory physical phenomena. Or not. The exercise may not be pseudoscientific, assuming that appellation is anything more meaningful than a nasty name.
That are questions and sayings, but they miss relevant points.
One point is that science is searching for coherence. If then a structure is discovered, which shows coherence between time functions, it is possible then to make predictions alike eclipses of the Sun by the Moon.
The next point is that the accuracy of the prediction in time an amplitude depends on the knowledge of the accuracy of the real function.
This is fulfilled by showing the solar tide time function of neighbour planets and the inverse square root function of the tide strength as well known from FFT spectra over 10000 years.
Using this functions you can not only simulate the solar tide functions for the last 5000 years, but also for the next 1000 years, simple because the astronomical NASA ephemerides are precise known to that date.
If you do not know what the nature of mass is or what the nature of gravity is, you still can predict eclipses because of knowing the geometrical laws of Kepler. And in Keplers laws are no physical forces involved. Just geometry. No one would call the prediction of eclipses pseudoscience, only because the are no physical forces in his formulas.
I have discovered the solar tide functions three years ago and they are known here to the regulars.
http://www.volker-doormann.org/ghi_solar_s.pdf
and an update from this year
http://www.volker-doormann.org/frequencies_of_climate.doc
Is is a tragedy that in this time there was absolutely no discussion on the subject in WUWT, neither by Anthony, nor by Dr. Scafetta, nor by anybody else.
V.
People attribute this quote (or something like it) to Einstein:
“It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.”
1) What Scafetta is doing is not simple.
2) It has way to many elements
3) It is not “elegant” in anyway shape or form. It’s an elephant. It’s more like “a dog’s breakfast”.
4)But most of all, there is no justification for any of the things he has done, because there is no statistically robust prediction.
Scafetta, why don’t you take up Willis challenge (and actually predict something?)
Update to prior post, I see now that the discussion in section 7 only relates to the 11 year cycle. Still, the general form of my first question remains, am I just not understanding the physical mechanisms you propose, or are they not in there?
Questions 2 and 3 can stand as they are I think.
Thanks,
Nicola Scafetta says:
July 23, 2013 at 2:21 pm
I should have qualified my remark about CO2 by saying “in the Phanerozoic Eon”. CO2 around 90,000 ppm in the Pre-Cambrian “Snowball Earth” glaciations may well have been a or even the major driver of deglaciation.
Willis’ challenge:
“Could he actually test his findings? Sure, and I’ve suggested it to him. What you need to do is run the analysis again, but this time using the data from say 1910 to 1959 only. Derive your 20 fitted variables using this data alone.
Then test your 20 fitted variables against the data from 1960 to 2009, and see how the variables pan out.”
Hmm.. to me looks like another version of Mann’s Hokey Stick. How well does your hindcasting do all the way back to the MWP and LIA? Seems your natural variation parameters are remarkable stable…. like a hockey stick.
Nicola, thank you for showing up to defend your work.
Next, as a number of people have pointed out, I’ve been over the top in some of the things I said. So I apologize for that wherever it has happened.
I also note Anthony’s generous offer that if you make your code and data available for replication, he would be happy to feature your work. I do look forward to that, as it will answer many questions.
Now, I understand your claim, that the various cycles you are using are all astronomical in nature. Let me take one of them, the 9.1 year cycle. According to you,
Now, you are right in your figures and calculations. But I’d have to ask, what is the physical meaning of the equation you are using, which is:
Yes, you are correct, that equation of yours does calculate out to 9.0751 years … but how is that anything but an artificial construct? Why not
Is that second one an astronomical cycle as well?
I ask because that second one calculates to about 10.2, and at various times you have used cycles of 9.1, 9.98, “10-11”, 10.2, 10.9, and 11.86 years for your cycles.
The problem is that when you do that, you have an infinite range of cycles that you can claim as being “based on astronomy” …
Here’s your explanation of the 60 year cycle:
Nicola Scafetta says: March 14, 2012 at 8:13 pm
Um … er … well, then why are you now using a 61 year cycle? In any case, I assume you are referring to three times the synodic cycle of Jupiter, which is 59.5766 years … why not use the real number, why use 60 or 61 years if you claim the synodic cycle is important?
In any case, this will all be clear when you reveal your data and your code. Then we can discuss this in detail.
All the best, and again, my apologies for where I was over the line. The problem is, when you post a graphic which squeezes in four different small graphs, and not one of them has any units of any kind, it’s hard not to be dismissive. I’m working on it, however, and my apology is sincere.
w.
Volker Doormann says:
July 23, 2013 at 3:06 pm
The remarkable fact is that a number of cultures around the world were able to predict eclipses even without Kepler’s work. In March 1504, Columbus used an eclipse to his advantage before Copernicus’ work or Kepler’s birth. He impressed indigenous Jamaicans but would not have done the Maya.
Stonehenge for instance could have been used to keep track of eclipses & hence predict in which month (or moon) lunar eclipses would occur, based solely upon observation, without understanding of celestial mechanics.
“And I’ve spent a lot of time looking for astronomical correlations with any features of the climate … unfortunately, they are weak, few, and far between. As usual with the climate, the noise seems to be larger than the signal (if one exists).”
Me too, but I figured that I need to know what is driving the noise. Like how this March was so cold, but the previous March was baking, and why the heat wave this July etc.
Mark Bofill says: July 23, 2013 at 2:46 pm
1) The details about the specific physical mechanisms are unknown. The model that I propose is a solar model that is based on the major expected theoretical cycles from tidal gravitational forces and solar speed relative to the solar system. These select the major expected frequencies that are tested to reproduce solar and temperature variations.
So, my model is based on specific major harmonics that are actually observed.
About ” Is the claim that you refuse to share the data, calculations, and code you used true? If so, would you explain why? If not, would you make these available?”
This is a story first invented by Benestad and then strongly publicized by Steven Mosher that continuously repeat it as a broken disk for defamation purpose.
The truth is that my paper contains all details to replicate my calculations and findings. My papers are peer reviewed and therefore they pass all standard tests used in science.
About the data, I am not using personal data, but I am downloading the data from the web, such as the HadCRUT4 records.
About the equations that I use, they are clearly written in my papers. Just read them.
About the codes, they are usually very simple and the most relevant one such at periodogram evaluations are very popular and written in books such a Numerical Recipes by Press et al.
You may even use popular tools of analysis such as the The Singular Spectrum Analysis – MultiTaper Method (SSA-MTM) Toolkit.
Of course to replicate a scientific finding one needs to master the technique of analysis and needs to know how to download the data via internet.
Benestad invented the story that I do not share data, formulas and codes because Benestad and Schmidt, 2009 published a paper criticizing some of my previous papers. Then I demonstrate that their paper is filled of math errors. See the story here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/04/scafetta-benestad-and-schmidt%E2%80%99s-calculations-are-%E2%80%9Crobustly%E2%80%9D-flawed/
So, because Benestad could not reply, he invented the story that they failed the calculation of their paper because “after” its publication I would not have shared data and formula with them.
Which is by the way false because all data and code are public. One just need how to use them.
A detailed rebuttal of Benestad and Schmidt, 2009 is here
Scafetta N., 2013. Discussion on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming. Pattern Recognition in Physics, 1, 37–57.
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/1/37/2013/prp-1-37-2013.html
where I replicate all their calculations and prove the errors without asking them codes or data.
Nicola,
Thanks so much for your response. In this case, I will study your paper in depth with great interest.
If extending your natural variation back to include the MWP and LIA makes them disappear (ie MWP not as warm and LIA nearly 2C colder than today) then you clearly are missing something in your natural variation equation . Rather than calling it hindcasting, what I think you have done is more aptly described as using the time frame 1850-1950 as your calibration period.
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 23, 2013 at 3:33 pm
You are referring to the exact physical mechanism(s), but I am not discussing them in my paper. Your accusation are empty.
The 9.07 year cycle can be constructed from the lunar harmonics, as also you calculate, and it is found in the climate system. Thus, the most likely interpretation of this temperature cycle is that is a lunar induced cycle.
The microscopic mechanisms will be better understood in the future and with them also the exact frequencies will be clarified.
At he moment there is not just one cycle, by many. And interfere among them.
For the purpose of my paper saying that the cycle is 9.07 or 9.03 year (for example) changes little.
Because on 100 years the error would be just a couple of months.
The same is about the 60 and 61 cycles, both may be present. But practically on a 200 year scale the difference would be just within 3 years, not a big deal, for a practical purpose. I need to use only one cycle instead of two because power spectra do not separate them on a 160 year data. So, in the present paper I made a different choice of my previous model, the results are very similar (not identical of course).
Your criticism is invalid in science. Science proceed steps by steps. First there are the empirical finding tested by semi empirical models like mines, after all mechanisms will be clarified one day.
Also for the ocean tides the right harmonics are not understood yet because the true mechanisms are not understood yet, so people use 40 theoretical astronomical harmonics obtained in various ways in regression models to get the correct variability.
You do not understand my method because you do not understand the tidal ocean model. Learn first to predict tides and then come back.
Obviously Science in the USA is akin to a Contact Sport, and promoting a new and unproven theory leaves one open to being Mugged :O That being the case, it becomes almost miraculous that Mann has survived to Prosper from his nonsense 🙂
So three times the synodic cycle of Jupiter or otherwise some combination of Jupiter’s and Saturn’s orbits, gives the approximately 60-year component?
But the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is a well-known approximately 60-year “pseudocycle”, long known to correlate well with Earth’s climate, arising from underlying ocean processes as Bob Tisdale has explained to us.
So why can’t this mysterious approximately 60-yr cycle of Scafetta actually be the well-known PDO?
Fanakapan says:
July 23, 2013 at 4:30 pm
Mann is backed by the whole Climate-Industrial-Government Complex, which stands to profit financially, professionally or in power from the scam.
“I do love the “3″ in the 983 year cycle.”
953yrs would make sense for synodic periods. Maybe he simply misread it somewhere. There are no major heliocentric planetary cycles anywhere near 983yrs.
Nicola Scafetta says:
July 23, 2013 at 4:13 pm
Egads, how soon they forget … from my previous discussion with you last year, Nicola …
I ended up producing that tide chart and selling it in the shops in Honiara. I made a few bucks on it, but mostly it was a service for the fishermen. It was done in Excel, showed the graph of the tide height and also the phase of the moon. A fun project, and totally necessary when you want to schedule a marine slipway …
So, been there, done that … next objection?
w.
What we are currently observing has happened before and is cyclical. If we understand the physical reasons for past cyclic events we could based on current observations be able to predict what will happen next.
If I understand the mechanisms solar cycle 24 will provide observational data to resolve the physical reasons why there is correlation between sets of parameters where there should be no physical connection. If there is unequivocal observational evidence – the start of a series of new anomalies that suddenly appear for no reason correlating with the solar cycle 24 change – I would be interesting in collaborating with different people to write a set of papers to explain physically what is happening and what will happen in the future.
Comment:
As I stated based on observational evidence the sun will be spotless by the end of this year. There will be observational evidence that the solar magnetic cycle has been interrupted which is physically not possible with the current solar model. I get that.
It appears, if I understand the physical reasons for the anomalies, that there are fundamental errors in the solar model, related to what creates the solar magnetic field, solar wind, sunspots, and coronal holes. The errors in the solar model explain a set of mature astronomical anomalies that are widely discussed in astronomical journals. Due to a number of practical and sociological reasons scientists do not suggest that there are or even that there could possibly be fundamental errors in the stellar model and cosmological theory. All discussion is within the limits of the paradigm. It is quite astonishing however the amount of mature anomalous astronomical observations (the first step when anomalous observations are found is to try to make them go away by identifying errors in measurement or systematical errors, the first stage can a decade or more to work through) to support the assertion that are fundamental errors in the stellar models and in cosmological theory.
Based on my understanding of the mechanisms sea level should now be significantly dropping due to the solar cycle 24 change.
A significant portion of the sea level rise in the last 20 years was not due to the oceans warming, ice melting, or the draining of aquifers. There is in the paleo record anomalous cyclic changes of ocean level.
As I have noted before there are also anomalous cyclic abrupt changes to the geomagnetic field.
Both the ocean level changes and the geomagnetic field changes correlate with planetary temperature changes. The geomagnetic field changes (geomagnetic field inclination changes 10 to 15 degrees) and geomagnetic field intensity changes of 5 to 10 fold are the principal cause of the major longer period climate change events.The physical cause of both the ocean level changes and the geomagnetic field changes is changes to the solar magnetic cycle.
Sea Level Controversy
ftp://falcon.grdl.noaa.gov/pub/bob/2004nature.pdf
Mass and volume contributions to twentieth-century
global sea level rise
The rate of twentieth-century global sea level rise and its causes are the subjects of intense controversy1–7. Most direct estimates from tide gauges give 1.5–2.0 mm/yr, whereas indirect estimates based on the two processes responsible for global sea level rise, namely mass and volume change, fall far below this range. Estimates of the volume increase due to ocean warming give a rate of about 0.5mmyr21 (ref. 8) and the rate due to mass increase, primarily from the melting of continental ice, is thought to be even smaller. Therefore, either the tide gauge estimates are too high, as has been suggested recently6, or one (or both) of the mass and volume estimates is too low.
Nicola Scafetta says:
July 23, 2013 at 12:16 pm
Nature will eventually confirm or rebut my theory. Up to now Nature seems to follow it quite well.
So you claim. But without quantitative assessment. Now, science happens when scientists can build on the work by others. There are many ‘planetary’ claims out there. A new one is that by Abreu et al. Does your claim agree with theirs?
You are still evading this issue.
“… It has no less than six different cycles, with periods of 9.1, 10.2, 21, 61, 115, and 983 years. …”
Is that enough cycles to enter next year’s Tour de France? Team Scaffeta? !:-)
Dr. Scafetta:
Having had comments of my own–which I am pretty sure were correct–dismissed by Mr. Eschenbach, I am certainly willing to entertain the proposition is that your theory is compelling. But there are many of us out here who are not willing to invest too much time in checking out the theories of those who are unwilling to help us out.
To me, it seems that code taking the Fourier transform of a test period (e.g., 1880-1950), bringing the six highest components (with their respective amplitudes and phases) forward (through, e.g., 2012), and demonstrating that the results are close to the measured values would be easy and helpful. Yes, many of us would have little problem doing this on our own, but, then, we would be open to your contention that somehow we had done it wrong. If you show us the “right” way, we could efficiently determine how compelling we think your theory is.
Yes, we’re lazy; that’s part of the human condition. But If you want your theories to gain wider acceptance, you will be well advised to deal with the human condition.
William Astley says:
July 23, 2013 at 5:08 pm
As I stated based on observational evidence the sun will be spotless by the end of this year. There will be observational evidence that the solar magnetic cycle has been interrupted which is physically not possible with the current solar model.
There is no such evidence, and you can’t really invoke what ‘will be’. Get real.
Nicola Scafetta says:
July 23, 2013 at 12:16 pm
interested readers need to read my paper
I have read all your papers [even peer-reviewed some of the more abortive ones] and they are not convincing. Comparing yourself to Ptolemaeus, Kepler, and Newton does not imbue you with their authority. Considering your choice of language [here and in previous posts and comments], I think Willis does not need to apologize for anything.
Now, science happens when scientists can build on the work by others. There are many ‘planetary’ claims out there. A new one is that by Abreu et al. Does your claim agree with theirs?
You are still evading this issue.
Joe Born says:
July 23, 2013 at 5:53 pm
Dr. Scafetta, Joe has proposed a simple test which would do wonders for your claims. I really hope you take him up on it.
Joe, if I’ve dismissed you when you were correct, my bad. There’s always more to learn.
w.
@Volker Doormann
You say: The problem with this saying is that some correlations do not imply causation, but are recognized as physical laws.
The problem is we recognize all of those laws also as wrong … incase you missed the memo classic physics is blatantly and definably wrong it is just a layman simplification … hard science says that.
Kepler, Newtonian mechanics all wrong we know they are and science says they are openly and loudly.
You say: But the main nonsense is that it is of no worth to stale was in not. Science is to recognize coherence, what ever it is.
Rubbish it does it hasn’t accepted it 100 years but you obviously missed that class?
Science hasn’t accepted correlation as proof in over a 100 years and no the lack of pirates is not causing global warming.
Your answer is completely wrong at science … end of story.
Volker Doormann answer got me wondering has our teaching and reporting of science got that bad that the fact all these old classic laws are wrong not discussed anymore.
I had to go and look at current entries in Wikipedia and was relieved they at least do cover it under the section “limits to validity” which obviously we need to get promoted higher up the articles given some of the comments on here.
@Nicola Scafetta
If all these celestial bodies are causing global warming have you considered tracking all the airplanes, satellites and the ISS because the effects from them must be massive … remember square law function for gravity. A 300 or 400 ton plane at a few kilometers off the earth is going to have a massive gravity tide compared to some pathetic planet millions of millions of kilometers away.
You see where all this garbage goes don’t you?
LdB says:
July 23, 2013 at 7:27 pm
remember square law function for gravity. A 300 or 400 ton plane at a few kilometers off the earth is going to have a massive gravity tide
It is worse than that. The amplitude of tides varies with the inverse cube of the distance.
LdB says:
July 23, 2013 at 7:27 pm
What if it’s not just the direct gravitational effect of the gas giants on earth, but the combined effect of that plus whatever influence the big planets have on the sun, too, which could then also affect earth?
Small changes might have outsized impacts in a finely balanced system. Or maybe not. But let’s please pursue any remotely plausible avenue instead of declaring climate science settled on CO2 & practically nothing else. Saying, as do Al Gore & his minions, “What else could it be?” isn’t IMO science. Science should rather ask, “What could it be?”
milodonharlani says:
July 23, 2013 at 7:36 pm
Saying, as do Al Gore & his minions, “What else could it be?” isn’t IMO science.
“It’s the Sun, stupid”. What else could it be?
@milodonharlani
Sure and it could also be the science proposed dark matter which is either increased in or decreased in the sun. I mean the universe doesn’t hold together properly without dark matter ask any cosmologist.
See you just answered the question about why science no longer accepts correlation as cause we haven’t done since Einstein introduced General Relativity and showed how dangerous that can because we had taken Newtons law at face value.
Thanks, Willis. A good article, if somewhat overly aggressive at times. Thanks for the subsequent clarifications in your comments.
To me, it comes down to whether Dr. Scafetta’s model works or not.
His “classic” model I think is shown in http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model_1 (scafetta-forecast.png).
I do not yet understand his latest paper, “Solar and planetary oscillation control on climate change: hind-cast, forecast and a comparison with the CMIP5 GCMs”, at http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/pdf/Scafetta_EE_2013.pdf
I do understand you attempt to falsify this work from first principles and he attempts to defend it.
I see his work injured, but still standing. I will be watching.
LdB says:
July 23, 2013 at 7:45 pm
True. Science is never settled, even gravitational theory, which might have seemed settled from 1687 to 1905. How much less then can the complex phenomena of climate ever be?
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 23, 2013 at 7:38 pm
Maybe somebody asks that question, but I don’t. I have tried to explore every avenue through which it could be the sun, but when the hole drilled comes up dry, I move on to explore other fields. I greatly appreciate you & your colleagues fact & argument against an important solar influence on climate.
Still, it strikes me as improbable that the Spoerer, Maunder & Dalton Minima were just coincidentally cold periods.
Dr. Svalgaard, may I ask why you wish to honor Dr. Eddy, if you disagree with the work which made him famous? Or am I misinformed?
Willis this is O/T but I enjoyed your blogs on BC’s carbon tax since I live there and have to put up with those nutters. Anyhow the CBC, Canadian Broadcast Corporation, our taxpayer paid news outlet on the same level as the BBC, has an item where BC government is calling the tax a success, no mention of C02 reduction, here is the link
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/07/23/bc-carbon-sustainable-prosperity-premiers.html?cmp=rss
CBC is very pro AGW and thier news reports in this format is usually open to comments but in this case comments are closed. I suspect because whenever anything they report re: AGW is getting increasing negative comments going against thier idol Suzuki.
milodonharlani says:
July 23, 2013 at 8:01 pm
Still, it strikes me as improbable that the Spoerer, Maunder & Dalton Minima were just coincidentally cold periods.
The Little Ice Age was probably an extended period of cold 1400-1900 [ http://www.leif.org/research/Global-Temperatures-2000-yrs.png ]. That there were solar minima during that time is not so improbable as such occur every ~100 years or so; we would expect something like 4 during the LIA just by chance which seems to be what we got. I don’t see anything improbable about that.
milodonharlani says:
July 23, 2013 at 8:09 pm
Dr. Svalgaard, may I ask why you wish to honor Dr. Eddy, if you disagree with the work which made him famous?
Jack Eddy was a good friend of mine and he should be honored for drawing attention to the Maunder Minimum and its possible ramifications [based on the information available to him at the time]. Posing the right question is the valuable thing to do, especially if your work inspires many other scientists to take a hard look at the question. That is why he rightfully deserves the honor [not necessarily for being correct].
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 23, 2013 at 9:52 am
This is not a new idea. It goes back to 1852 and has not gained acceptance because it has not worked and not advanced science.
Wolf’s ideas back then are very different to today. But yourself , Willis and Anthony prefer to criticize and smear from above without having ANY understanding of the underlying principles.
Willis has been offered advise and teaching from Geoff Sharp in the past which he did not take up, Svalgaard is also yet to display any knowledge of the basic principles in a challenge raised by GS years ago on his website, and Anthony has no knowledge on the topic. You guys are not in a position to judge, let alone be capable of peer review.
Meanwhile a lot of esteemed scientists are now looking seriously at the possibility of planetary influence on solar output and Earth’s climate.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 23, 2013 at 8:12 pm
The Little Ice Age was probably an extended period of cold 1400-1900 [ http://www.leif.org/research/Global-Temperatures-2000-yrs.png ]. That there were solar minima during that time is not so improbable as such occur every ~100 years or so; we would expect something like 4 during the LIA just by chance which seems to be what we got. I don’t see anything improbable about that.
What a joke, the LIA has 4 of the deepest grand minima of the Holocene, in a row!
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 23, 2013 at 8:12 pm
Those minima did occur during the LIA, but based upon proxy data reconstructions, they seem to be associated with the coldest portions of that cold period, noticeably cooler than the phases in between them. Dalton I’ll grant does also coincide with some major volcanic activity, IIRC.
We may soon have the opportunity to see what a comparable minimum might mean during a warm period.
Your reply to my question on Dr. Eddy is well said. Thanks.
milodonharlani says:
July 23, 2013 at 8:52 pm
Those minima did occur during the LIA, but based upon proxy data reconstructions, they seem to be associated with the coldest portions of that cold period, noticeably cooler than the phases in between them.
Not really, in general. Look at the years around 1600 or right now for that matter. Now, we do expect a dip of the order of 0.05-0.1 degree at low solar activity [simply because TSI is a bit lower], so you might be picking some of those up. None of this shows that the Sun is a major driver of climate.
LBR says:
July 23, 2013 at 8:45 pm
What a joke, the LIA has 4 of the deepest grand minima of the Holocene, in a row!
Successive minima are always in a row and they will necessarily occur over the 500-yr interval that is the LIA.
Clive E. BIrkland says:
July 23, 2013 at 8:39 pm
Willis has been offered advise and teaching from Geoff Sharp
Geoff does know enough to give advise or teaching on this subject. All he can do is spout his opinion.
In response to my comments at:
July 23, 2013 at 9:45 am
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 23, 2013 at 9:52 am. It goes back to 1852 and has not gained acceptance because it has not worked and not advanced science.”
The following response is given in the spirit of an ally and friend who does not want
to see Anthony’s reputation sullied by one poor judgement:
Leif, you are not paying attention: I used the words “new and/or alternative ideas”. The overall concept is not new but some of the recent proposals in this field have only surfaced in the last few years, and you know it. And as per usual, you counter scientific arguments with empty bluster.
I see that Anthony, Willis and Leif are running scared. That’s why they’re taking out all stops to discredit an idea that is starting to get traction in the scientific community.
Leif, you are not telling Anthony and Willis everything are you? I thought not. Otherwise, they would know about the upcoming rush of solar scientists who are about to publish solid results supporting the solar-planetary theory.
Anthony and Willis, can I suggest that you ambush Leif at your next coffee break and ask him to spill all of the beans…. otherwise you guys are going to have egg all over your collective faces.
If he denies all, ask him why some of his former buddies are driving the winds of change.
REPLY: Let me say for the record:
1. I don’t care what your opinion is on this matter.
2. I have other reasons that I’m not privvy to disclose.
3. Nobody is “running scared”. The work simply has no merit in my opinion, at one time I thought it did.
Anthony
Clive E. BIrkland says:
July 23, 2013 at 8:39 pm
Willis has been offered advise and teaching from Geoff Sharp in the past
Geoff does not have a grasp on elementary physics. His wrong ideas about Angular Momentum transfer shows how little he knows. This paper by Shirley exposes the depth of Geoff’s ignorance: http://www.leif,org/research/Spin-Orbit-Coupling-Shirley-JPL.png
LBR says:
July 23, 2013 at 8:45 pm
What a joke, the LIA has 4 of the deepest grand minima of the Holocene, in a row!
Apart from this not being true, four consecutive minima always occur in a row.
Ian Wilson says:
July 23, 2013 at 9:11 pm
Leif, you are not paying attention: I used the words “new and/or alternative ideas”. The overall concept is not new but some of the recent proposals in this field have only surfaced in the last few years
By definition ‘recent’ have only surfaced in the ‘last few years’.
Some of the people you are talking about are some of my best friends and we are working together at scientific workshops, e.g. http://www.leif.org/Svalgaard_ISSI_Proposal_Base.pdf
Their basic argument is that they have identified a large number of peaks in the power spectrum and calculate that the chance of those peaks being there by chance is something like 0.000,000,000,01. I show in http://www.leif.org/research/Comment-Planetary-Peaks.pdf that their argument is flawed in that all the peaks they identify can be harmonics of a single peak near 1000 years, so are not independent and their probability argument falls. A single peak at 1000 years is all it takes. Study Figure 1 in my comment paper carefully.
http://www.leif.org/research/Svalgaard_ISSI_Proposal_Base.pdf of course
In response to
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 23, 2013 at 5:00 pm
So you know all about the tides, do you?
Then you should know about these papers, Willis!
Millennial Climate Variability: Is There a Tidal Connection?
WALTER MUNK, MATTHEW DZIECIUCH and STEVEN JAYNE
J O U R N A L O F C L I M A T E, 2001, VOL15, p. 370
Significant dissipation of tidal energy in the deep ocean inferred from satellite altimeter data
G. D. Egbert & R. D. Ray
NATURE, VOL 405, 15 JUNE 2000, p. 775
Moon, tides and climate
Carl Wunsch
NATURE, VOL 405, 15 JUNE 2000, p. 743
Internal Tides and Ocean Mixing
Chris Garrett
SCIENCE, VOL 301, 26 SEPTEMBER 2003 , p. 1858
Ian Wilson says:
July 23, 2013 at 9:41 pm
So you know all about the tides, do you?
“It is not what you know that gets you in trouble, but what you that ain’t”
The tides the planets raise on the Sun and the Earth are 100 to 10,000 times smaller than those the Moon raises on the Earth. Did you know that?
Anthony,
I stand by the words I posted above:
“The following response is given in the spirit of an ally and friend who does not want
to see Anthony’s reputation sullied by one poor judgement:”
It is not about who is right or who is wrong. Nor is it about what you or I believe is true. The evidence will prevail, no matter what you think about me or my opinions.
In other words it is not personal…You are about to get a lesson in humility. I just tried to
warn you as a ally.
REPLY: Understood, I have no concerns over whatever this paper is supposed to be coming up. With all the evidence I have seen thus far, I don’t perceive significant supporting evidence for planetary/barycentric style climate theory. – Anthony
“One of these days those folks will wake up to who is running that outfit. – Anthony”
Anthony,
to be fair, the false flag trick worked on Dr. Spencer and Jeff at the Airvent fell for it too. It also worked on you for a considerable period and may in part be working still. PSI worked hard to make anyone who challenged the radiative greenhouse effect hypothesis look ridiculous. You were happy to choose the “safe” path and group any who challenged the idea of a net warming effect from radiative gases as “Slayers” or PSI believers.
You are likely correct in supporting Willis’ criticisms of cyclomaina, however Willis is not always correct. Willis, as far as I know, still believes incident IR in the 15 micron band can slow the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool 😉
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 23, 2013 at 6:53 am
Clive E. BIrkland says:
July 23, 2013 at 8:39 pm
Clive, first, your comment is very hard to reply to, since all you do is accuse Leif, Anthony, and I of being bereft of even basic knowledge.
Now, that’s OK if you provide the knowledge that we supposedly lack … but you provide nothing.
Finally, you seem to think that I deny planetary influences on the earth. Nothing of the sort. I just haven’t found any evidence for them, and believe me, I’ve looked very hard … and you certainly haven’t presented any such evidence.
So please, come back when you have knowledge to share, or evidence … because simply claiming that your opponents are idiots makes you look like … well … an idiot.
w.
Ian Wilson says:
July 23, 2013 at 9:41 pm
Actually, no, I don’t, nor did I say I knew all about the tides.
I’m more well informed about them than the average bear, because I was forced to figure them out in order to run a slipway on a remote coral atoll. And I researched them extensively for my articles on Tuvalu.
Finally, of course, I’ve studied their effects all my life because I’ve been a sailor and a commercial fisherman, and you’d better know about them if you do that.
But “know all about them”? No, that’s some other guy you’re thinking about, not me.
w.
Please, would someone UN-ADJUST the HadCrud record before they use it !!!
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 23, 2013 at 10:12 pm
Finally, you seem to think that I deny planetary influences on the earth. Nothing of the sort. I just haven’t found any evidence for them, and believe me, I’ve looked very hard … and you certainly haven’t presented any such evidence.
You have not looked hard and have no grasp of the principles…quoting you looked at Theo’s stuff is not good enough. Some advise would be to go to Geoff’s site and take him up on his offer to educate. Then you might be in a better position to claim some knowledge, otherwise you are just making a fool of yourself.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 23, 2013 at 9:19 pm
LBR says:
July 23, 2013 at 8:45 pm
What a joke, the LIA has 4 of the deepest grand minima of the Holocene, in a row!
———————-
Apart from this not being true, four consecutive minima always occur in a row.
If you are going to respond can you at least be factual, I don’t know what solar record you are using, but you have it wrong. I was referring to the depth which of course is the main concern, and there has not been another period like the LIA for at least 5000 years looking at the Steinhilber or Solanki record.
Steinhilber, isn’t he the esteemed scientist that backs planetary influence, along with others like Abreu, McCraken, Beer etc?????
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 23, 2013 at 10:57 pm
You have not looked hard and have no grasp of the principles
I shall confess that I also have no grasp of the principles behind astrology, homeopathy, Scientology, Electric Universe, and other assorted pseudo-scientific babble, but I do have a firm grasp on physics and that is what counts [and what Geoff – and you – lack].
One mark of the sorry ‘science’ behind planetary musings is that the various proponents can’t even agree on what the whole thing is. E.g. I have repeatedly asked Scafetta if his correlations and peaks and mechanism match those of Abreu et al. or any of the other peddlers, for that matter. As expected: no reply.
LBR says:
July 23, 2013 at 11:08 pm
and there has not been another period like the LIA for at least 5000 years looking at the Steinhilber or Solanki record.
But here have been lots of other dips in solar activity for the last 10,000 years, e.g. Figure 9 of http://www.leif.org/research/swsc130003p.pdf
Steinhilber, isn’t he the esteemed scientist that backs planetary influence
Steinhilber is no longer active in the field.
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 23, 2013 at 10:57 pm
How on earth would you know how hard I looked? That’s just hubristic posturing, you weren’t there when I was looking, you have no clue what I’ve done.
w.
For the records.
Willis Eschenbach has shown Dr. Scafetta’s Figure 11:
“Figure 2. Scafetta’s Figure 11 (click to enlarge) ORIGINAL CAPTION: (Left) Schematic representation of the rise and fall of several civilizations since Neolithic times that well correlates with the 14C radio- nucleotide records used for estimating solar activity (adapted from Eddy’s figures in Refs. [90, 91]).
The complex near 900 year period in the Eddy’s 14C figure I have overlayed with the two solar tide functions of Pluto/Neptun plus Quaoar/Pluto back in time 5000 years in this graph created 26th February 2010 :
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/ghi_23_eddy.gif
Because the strength of the solar tidal force is a square root function of the tide frequency the strength of the near 900 year solar tide period of Quaoar/Pluto is 2 times that of the 246 year solar tide time period of Pluto/Neptun. The solar tide period is t = 1/[2 * (|f1-f2|)], while f1 and f2 are the frequencies of the bodies.
If Dr. Scafetta now comes up with a 900 year cycle out of the box, when I have informed him years ago about my discovery without an answer, the history of this discovery on the 11th February 2010 should be known to anybody
Thank you, Anthony.
V.
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 23, 2013 at 11:15 pm
How on earth would you know how hard I looked? That’s just hubristic posturing, you weren’t there when I was looking, you have no clue what I’ve done.
I have been watching your comments on this topic for years. At no time have you showed even a basic understanding.
Give me some detail on your knowledge, what major concept does Theo use to predict grand minima??
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 23, 2013 at 10:12 am
///////////////////////////
I am well acquainted with the story of the elephant; heaven knows, it has been so often recounted. It might have been amusing the first time one heard, but after a dozen or more times it becomes rather stale. It is like a stand up comedian peddling the same old jokes that he was telling 20 years ago, and when challenged, claiming that the old ones are the best..
In fact, I would have thought that the majority of the readers of this blog were equally familiar with it, such that there was no need for you to recount the story at length, and to do so is an insult to their knowledge. It adds nothing as to whether some or all of the parameters used by Scaffeta are relevant and/or in some way determinative. It merely suggests that in some incidences there may be no more substance than mere coincidence.
You raise a valid underlying point but the article is marred by the tone. Your article might have been better had it briefly dealt with cyclomania and curve fitting, but then go on to focus on Mr Scafetta not dealing with your enquiries, not providing data and codes etc. That is just my opinion, and will therefore not be equally shared by all, but likewise it will be as valid as anyone elses.
LBR says:
July 23, 2013 at 11:08 pm
But here have been lots of other dips in solar activity for the last 10,000 years, e.g. Figure 9 of http://www.leif.org/research/swsc130003p.pdf without any LIAs. First you claimed ‘the largest dips in the whole Holecene’, then you shortened that to 5000 years, and if you look at the dips the last 400 years, they are not particularly spectacular.
The discussion continues. As I said above the interested readers should read my paper and not trust Willis comments. My paper can be downloaded from here
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/pdf/Scafetta_EE_2013.pdf
Willis comment is filled of errors also because he did not read my paper, he simply skimmed it, as I have already demonstrated above and also numerous people noted.
Very likely also Antony did not read it as he continuously repeats his Barycentric convinction ignoring the result from tidal forcings, electromagnetic forcings etc.And he did not note that my data and the equations are clearly written in the paper and easily accessible.
Willis continues with his handwave argument. At my challenge to try to predict the ocean tides that need much more astronomical harmonics (up to 40) than my 6, the only thing that he was able to do was to copy and past a list of tidal harmonics names from somewhere.
Try to do some homework, Willis. Take a tidal record with a sufficient resolution (e.g. 10 minutes) for a month, and let us see how you use it to predict the tides starting from nothing. Develop your own tidal theory from the beginning, do not use the recipes that were already developed. Start to identify the harmonics, from the data, try to give them a physical meaning and we will see whether or not you also will end up using a large number of oscillations.
I need to agree with Ian Wilson that Anthony, Willis and Leif are isolating themselves on this issue due to their inability to see how scientific things are moving around. New papers in the peer reviewed literature are coming out.
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 23, 2013 at 11:55 pm
what major concept does Theo use to predict grand minima??
the golden ratio and the five fingers [giving us the middle finger as the maximum]:
http://bourabai.narod.ru/landscheidt/golden.htm
This is not science.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 23, 2013 at 11:56 pm
But here have been lots of other dips in solar activity for the last 10,000 years, e.g. Figure 9 of http://www.leif.org/research/swsc130003p.pdf without any LIAs. First you claimed ‘the largest dips in the whole Holecene’, then you shortened that to 5000 years, and if you look at the dips the last 400 years, they are not particularly spectacular.
Willis
re: comment
Two primary spectral components (16.13 & 21.4 years) of the geomagnetic field change at core-mantle boundary (Jackson-ETHZ & Bloxham–Harvard data) produce the AMO’s periods from the sum and difference of the two relevant frequencies.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 24, 2013 at 12:00 am
But here have been lots of other dips in solar activity for the last 10,000 years, e.g. Figure 9 of http://www.leif.org/research/swsc130003p.pdf without any LIAs. First you claimed ‘the largest dips in the whole Holecene’, then you shortened that to 5000 years, and if you look at the dips the last 400 years, they are not particularly spectacular.
You are misquoting me, I said the LIA contained some of the deepest grand minima of the Holocene and 4 of them happened in a row (last one not so strong) which is the significant point. But you choose to right off the era as nothing unusual, this is how you do science…all smoke and mirrors.
Just an addition on Anthony, Willis and Leif who are isolating themselves on this issue due to their inability to see how scientific things are moving around.
One of the major aspect of science is to be able to distinguish among plausible theories.
When people do not have a sufficient physical and mathematical background, such as Anthony, Willis and Leif, they should avoid stating non-senses and showing up with an attitude finalized to deny everything.
Anthony, Willis and Leif are simply arguing that the theory that I propose must be wrong because they do not understand it a-priory. Which evidently is not a valid argument because they do not even try to read my paper to try to understand what is written there.
A simple way to evaluate theories is to check whether an agreement with the data exists.
In the case of the IPCC AGW Anthony and the like can say that those models are not trustful not because Anthony understand their physics, very likely he has no clue about it as he has no clue about the solar-planetary theory. Anthony and the like can say that those models are not trustful because the models fail to properly hindcast the data such as the post 2000 standstill.
In this they express a reasonable argument.
however, in the case of the theory that I propose, Anthony do not find any disagreement with the data. My hind casts and forecasts are succeeding.
But instead of wondering, they handwave just for denying. This is not a mature way to act. It is very childish indeed.
LBR says:
July 24, 2013 at 12:18 am
You are misquoting me, I said the LIA contained some of the deepest grand minima of the Holocene and 4 of them happened in a row (last one not so strong)
You said:
LBR says:
July 23, 2013 at 8:45 pm
What a joke, the LIA has 4 of the deepest grand minima of the Holocene, in a row!
As you can see form Steinhilbers data Figure 9 of http://www.leif.org/research/swsc130003p.pdf
there were something like 9 deep minima the past 9,400 years [the later part of the Holocene]. Only one of those occurred during the LIA. The other minima during the LIA were not deep [compare with all the other about 50 such dips]. But you are correct that all dips happen in a row: first one, then another one, followed by yet another one, and lo-and-behold one more, etc.
@Ian Wilson
What I think Anthony is telling you is he has learnt to stay more firmly with a hard science approach supposed correlations come and go but unless you can firmly and scientifically link the correlations they likely mean nothing.
What I personally have noticed is a younger Anthony might have gone off science reservation and got all excited about supposed correlations but now he sticks with the hardened scientific edge which I suspect has something he has hardened by actually publishing scientific publications.
Anthony is in no danger of any sort of personal damage because he is simply echoing a line that all hard science does … we call it prove it or shut up publishing.
Most of the problems climate science has got itself into is because it hasn’t taken hard science approach because it had a political agenda that it felt it needed to compel the public to act. So it bent scientific approach and finds itself in the mess that it is at the moment.
Anthony will never get into any problem taking the approach he has he can simply blame it on the rest of us scientists 🙂
Take the alternative and see how much of a mess Mr Monckton is going to be in going forward …… whats next he can get a correlation between AGW with Aliens, Pink rabbits, Pirates, number of not corrupt politicians the list goes on and on. According to Christopher any correlation will do so long as you can show a correlation its a science fact apparently.
I applaud you Anthony … I have now seen you take on greenhouse effect dragon slayers and Scafetta voodoo you qualify to call yourself an establishment scientist in my book … welcome to the club.
Nicola Scafetta says:
July 23, 2013 at 11:58 pm
New papers in the peer reviewed literature are coming out.
I have repeatedly asked you to tell us if your peaks, periods, and ‘mechanisms’ match those claimed in the ‘New’ papers. And you still evade that issue.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 24, 2013 at 12:28 am
The “in a row” comment is the point you seem to be missing, but I know you do not know the relevance of multiple deep grand minima. Keep watching the new science and you will learn.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 23, 2013 at 11:59 pm
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 23, 2013 at 11:55 pm
what major concept does Theo use to predict grand minima??
—————-
the golden ratio and the five fingers [giving us the middle finger as the maximum]:
http://bourabai.narod.ru/landscheidt/golden.htm
This is not science.
I agree most of it is rubbish, which you are happy to trot out. But the answer is incorrect and nothing to do with the main concept of predicting grand minima. One of his theories is close to reality and shows that amongst the chaff you can find a gem.
C’mon guys the question is not hard if you understand the theory and concepts. What major concept did Theo use to predict grand minima?
LBR says:
July 24, 2013 at 12:48 am
The “in a row” comment is the point you seem to be missing, but I know you do not know the relevance of multiple deep grand minima.
Several consecutive minima are always in a row.
But is is good to see that you do not object [how can you, considering the data] to “there were something like 9 deep minima the past 9,400 years [the later part of the Holocene]. Only one of those occurred during the LIA. The other minima during the LIA were not deep [compare with all the other about 50 such dips].” So, as you noted, nothing special.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 24, 2013 at 12:56 am
Several consecutive minima are always in a row.
But is is good to see that you do not object [how can you, considering the data] to “there were something like 9 deep minima the past 9,400 years [the later part of the Holocene]. Only one of those occurred during the LIA. The other minima during the LIA were not deep [compare with all the other about 50 such dips].” So, as you noted, nothing special.
The Wolf, Sporer and Maunder minima are the deepest of the Holocene, you must be living in another universe.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/image6.png
LBR says:
July 24, 2013 at 1:03 am
The Wolf, Sporer and Maunder minima are the deepest of the Holocene, you must be living in another universe.
No, I just have better data [Steinhilber 2010]:
http://www.leif.org/research/Holocene-HMF-B.png
@Nicola Scafetta
I second Leif Svalgaard … link the correlations scientifically or drop this garbage.
Want me to show you the problem Nicola perhaps I should publish this … see your figure 17 it shows a lot of proposed links.
However you do realize there I can think of one you left out ….. aliens pulling a gravitational slingshot around earth that takes energy out of earth and imparts it into the spaceship.
So now one wonders have the number of UFO sightings increased lately .. google is good for that sort of thing
http://www.openminds.tv/wp-content/uploads/MUFON-Sightings.jpg
WOW it even explains why global warming has leveled lately …. LOL
There you go so the increase in aliens preforming gravitational slingshots around earth is a possible cause of global warming and you don’t have that on your figure 17.
Come on Nicola give me any statistic you care and I promise I can make up a pseudoscience junk connection to global warming trend I have played this for hours with friends.
I already gave a good one above also not on your figure 17 … gravity waves from aircraft overhead I mean your whole theory is about gravity waves isn’t it?
Should I publish my findings Nicola and will you support them?
Wait stop the press this is a corker I have solved the whole climate change debate
Thinking about airplanes and a little google and I found a scientific report “Climate change could intensify airplane turbulence”
http://www.expedia.com.au/travel-news/travel/flights/climate-change-could-intensify-airplane-turbulence-419055.aspx
Now planes also create air turbulence so it’s obvious using Nicola Scafetta logic that we have a positive feedback mechanism and that’s what is causing global warming.
Just need to draw some pretty graphs and pictures and write my paper and I am pretty sure I can have the whole climate thing wrapped up then … don’t you love science in the fast lane.
As stated, I believe I understand the physical reason why there is correlation of tides, sea level, planetary temperate, planetary orbital position, and with solar magnetic cycle changes. There is also correlation of the geomagnetic field changes (abrupt axial changes to the field of 10 to 15 degrees which are called archeomagnetic jerks and cyclic excursions where the field intensity drops by a factor of 5 to 10) with solar magnetic cycle changes.
Fundamental errors in models and in theory are found by looking for and analyzing anomalies. For example the physical reason for the glacial/interglacial cycle and abrupt cyclic climate change is an anomaly. There is no physical explanation as to what could cause abrupt climate changes or abrupt changes to the geomagnetic field. The changes are too large, too fast, and are pseudo cyclical which cannot be explained by the current models. There is no explanation as to why the glacial/interglacial cycle from 3 million years ago to 800,000 years ago followed a 41,000 year cycle and then 800,000 years ago changed to a 100,000 year cycle. There is a very long list of anomalies that indicate the Milankovitch insolation theory is not correct. Something else is causing the glacial/interglacial cycle and is causing the cyclic geomagnetic excrusions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
Milankovitch cycle Problems (William: In your face anomalies which indicate theory failure.)
2.1 100,000-year problem
2.2 Stage 5 problem
2.3 Effect exceeds cause
2.4 The unsplit peak problem
2.5 The transition problem
2.6 Identifying dominant factor
http://www.agu.org/pubs/sample_articles/cr/2002PA000791/2002PA000791.pdf
The 41 kyr world: Milankovitch’s other unsolved mystery
As I have stated there is a very impressive set of mature investigated astronomical anomalies that support the assertion that there are fundamental errors in the stellar model which explain past and current correlations to solar magnetic cycle changes.
As we are in the middle of a climate war and premature discussion of issues related to solar magnetic cycle interruption could be disruptive, I am waiting to discuss the details to support the above assertions until there is unequivocal evidence the solar magnetic cycle has been interrupted. (Yes I understand that it is not possible based on the current solar model for the solar magnetic cycle to be interrupted. I disagree that there is no observational evidence that an interruption is underway; there is no point however in arguing that point as there will be confirming evidence and a NASA announcement of a significant unexplained solar magnetic cycle anomaly if the assertion is correct.)
In the 20th century there were two significant geomagnetic anomalies appeared correlating with solar magnetic cycle changes: 1) The South Atlantic geomagnetic field anomaly (Discovered in 1958, likely started to appear when the solar magnetic super cycle started) and 2) the abrupt increase (by a factor of 5) in the drift velocity of the North magnetic pole (appeared suddenly in 1990s).
What Caused Recent Acceleration of the North Magnetic Pole Drift?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010EO510001/abstract
…During the 1990s the NMP drift speed suddenly increased from 15 kilometers per year at the start of the decade to 55 kilometers per year by the decade’s end. This acceleration was all the more surprising given that the NMP drift speed had remained less than 15 kilometers per year over the previous 150 years of observation. Why did NMP drift accelerate in the 1990s? Answering this question may require revising a long-held assumption about processes in the core at the origin of fluctuations in the intensity and direction of the Earth’s magnetic field on decadal to secular time scales, …
Solar observations and questions:
1) Sunspot group counting problems. Look at this picture of the sun. How many sunspot groups?
Is you answer three? No, the correct answer – Boulder (NOAA/SWPC) – is five. Two of the sunspots groups are not visible.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/solar/
2) Sunspots are turning into pores
Why? No official answer to data.
http://www.solen.info/solar/
3) Is the fact that sunspots are turning into pores related to the fact that magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots is decaying linearly? Yes
4) Has what is currently happening to the sun happened before? Yes
5) Based on what has happened before what will be the consequences the solar magnetic cycle change? Cooling of the planet, followed by a geomagnetic excursion
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=24476
Glacial Records Depict Ice Age Climate in Synch Worldwide
“Because the Earth is oriented in space in such a way that the hemispheres are out of phase in terms of the amount of solar radiation they receive, it is surprising to find that the climate in the Southern Hemisphere cooled off repeatedly during a period when it received its largest dose of solar radiation,” says Singer. “Moreover, this rapid synchronization of atmospheric temperature between the polar hemispheres appears to have occurred during both of the last major ice ages that gripped the Earth.”
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/416/
Is the geodynamo process intrinsically unstable?
Recent palaeomagnetic studies suggest that excursions of the geomagnetic field, during which the intensity drops suddenly by a factor of 5 to 10 and the local direction changes dramatically, are more common than previously expected. The `normal’ state of the geomagnetic field, dominated by an axial dipole, seems to be interrupted every 30,000 to 100,000 kyr; it may not therefore be as stable as we thought. … ….Recent studies suggest that the Earth’s magnetic field has fallen dramatically in magnitude and changed direction repeatedly since the last reversal 700 kyr ago (Langereis et al. 1997; Lund et al. 1998). These important results paint a rather different picture of the long-term behaviour of the field from the conventional one of a steady dipole reversing at random intervals: instead, the field appears to spend up to 20 per cent of its time in a weak, non-dipole state (Lund et al. 1998). One of us (Gubbins 1999) has suggested that this is evidence of a rapid natural timescale (500 yr) in the outer core, and that the magnetic field is usually prevented from reversing completely by the longer diffusion time of the inner core (2 to 5 kyr). This raises a number of important but difficult questions for geodynamo theory. How can the geomagnetic field change so rapidly and dramatically? Can slight variations of the geomagnetic field affect the dynamics of core convection significantly? If so, is the geodynamo process intrinsically unstable?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v374/n6524/abs/374687a0.html
New evidence for extraordinary rapid change of geomagnetic field during a reversal
Palaeomagnetic results from lava flows recording a geomagnetic polarity reversal at Steens Mountain, Oregon suggest the occurrence of brief episodes of astonishingly rapid field change of six degrees per day. The evidence is large, systematic variations in the direction of remanent magnetization as a function of the temperature of thermal demagnetization and of vertical position within a single flow, which are most simply explained by the hypothesis that the field was changing direction as the flow cooled.
Nicola said
and he wasn’t kidding. Slow going.
I just realized that Willis did not report the abstract of my paper.
Some readers may be interested in it to have a more balanced summary of my work that does not appear in Willis (unprofessional) comments.
So this is the full reference
SOLAR AND PLANETARY OSCILLATION CONTROL ON CLIMATE CHANGE:
Hind-cast, Forecast and a Comparison with the CMIP5 GCMs
by Nicola Scafetta
take it from
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/pdf/Scafetta_EE_2013.pdf
or visit my web-site
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/
Abstract:
Global surface temperature records (e.g. HadCRUT4) since 1850 are characterized by climatic oscillations synchronous with specific solar, planetary and lunar harmonics superimposed on a background warming modulation. The latter is related to a long millennial solar oscillation and to changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere (e.g. aerosol and greenhouse gases). How- ever, current general circulation climate models, e.g. the CMIP5 GCMs, to be used in the AR5 IPCC Report in 2013, fail to reconstruct the observed climatic oscillations. As an alternate, an empirical model is proposed that uses: (1) a specific set of decadal, multidecadal, secular and millennial astronomic harmonics to simulate the observed climatic oscillations; (2) a 0.45 attenuation of the GCM ensemble mean simulations to model the anthropogenic and volcano forcing effects. The proposed empirical model outperforms the GCMs by better hind-casting the observed 1850-2012 climatic patterns. It is found that: (1) about 50-60% of the warming observed since 1850 and since 1970 was induced by natural oscillations likely resulting from harmonic astronomical forcings that are not yet included in the GCMs; (2) a 2000-2040 approximately steady projected temperature; (3) a 2000-2100 projected warming ranging between 0.3°C and 1.6°C , which is significantly lower than the IPCC GCM ensemble mean projected warming of 1.1°C to 4.1°C; (4) an equilibrium climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling centered in 1.35°C and varying between 0.9°C and 2.0°C .
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 24, 2013 at 12:54 am
I agree most of it is rubbish, which you are happy to trot out. But the answer is incorrect and nothing to do with the main concept of predicting grand minima. One of his theories is close to reality and shows that amongst the chaff you can find a gem.
When it was found that the spoon bender cheated at least two thirds of the time, the devoted followers exclaimed: “so what, at least one third is the genuine article”.
William Astley says:
July 24, 2013 at 4:31 am
As stated, I believe I understand the physical reason why there is correlation of tides, sea level, planetary temperate, planetary orbital position, and with solar magnetic cycle changes.
At an asylum for the insane there are three Napoleons and two Einsteins. At least so the inmates claim. Go join them, and don’t forget to reserve your ticket to Stockholm to go collect your Nobel Prize. Perhaps it will be a split prize as there seems to be another candidate here who also understands it all.
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 24, 2013 at 12:54 am
What major concept did Theo use to predict grand minima?
Ah, here is the gem you are seeking:
“A phase reversal [an irregular maximum instead of the regular minimum] occurs when the starting phase of a big finger collides with the initial phase of a small finger. The new rhythm continues until the next starting phase of a big finger intervenes”.
All is clear.
Nicolas says “My hind casts and forecasts are succeeding.”
I still have yet to see your hindcast include the LIA and MWP.
Willis Eschenbach:
At “John Daly, Station of the Week – Northern Norway (3 Oct 03),” ; a Postscript, 08: Oct.2003 reads:
___ “Willis Eschenbach did a closer examination of Vardø and also found the same discontinuity around 1920, amounting to 0.73°C. …..”; the published graphic is here: http://www.john-daly.com/stations/vardo2.gif .
What was the reason for this significant annual discontinuity? Would your reasoning be different if this sudden shift has shown up particularly during the winter season from about 1920 to 1940, starting in the Arctic sector of the North Atlantic, but increased subsequently the air temperatures all over the Northern Hemisphere (N.America until 1933, in Europe until 1940)? It could not have been tides, neither the sun, and most unlikely any ‘cycle’, as discussed here: http://www.arctic-heats-up.com/ , which indicates that it had been merely an ocean issue. Your mentioned Vardø examination and findings is well appreciated, and an inspiration for a better understanding of the global warming period from 1920 to 1940.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 24, 2013 at 7:09 am
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 24, 2013 at 12:54 am
What major concept did Theo use to predict grand minima?
—————-
Ah, here is the gem you are seeking:
“A phase reversal [an irregular maximum instead of the regular minimum] occurs when the starting phase of a big finger collides with the initial phase of a small finger. The new rhythm continues until the next starting phase of a big finger intervenes”.
All is clear.
What is clear is that none of the procrastinators know what Landschidt used to predict grand minima. If you do not know this basic piece of information, you know nothing.
Keep trying, you might learn something, his method is not 100% correct, but close to the mark (off by 20 years).
@Nicola Scafetta
=> (1) about 50-60% of the warming observed since 1850 and since 1970 was induced by natural oscillations likely resulting from harmonic astronomical forcings that are not yet included in the GCMs
So explain that garbage stop dancing around the issue that statement is mumbo jumbo.
Even if you take standard Milankovitch theory it has no science basis and is garbage because it’s basis is Kepler’s laws which science already knows is wrong. You can’t base a theory on something you know is wrong and make it right and expect science to go along.
We tried that once with Newton’s laws and it got us into a pile of trouble because it was wrong but the observation correlated well. Don’t ever expect science to do that again and your correlation is never going to be as good as gravity was to Newtons law and I don’t care how long you play with your wiggly lines.
As scientists we don’t care how well you line all this garbage up it’s still garbage unless you can correctly fix all this up.
So how about starting at the beginning and acting like a proper scientist …. from memory someone has already done all the corrections to Kepler’s orbits into GR/SR and yes Keplers orbits were wrong as well.
When you have boosted all the cycles into GR/SR you might actually be able to see what is going on and you should even be able to have a nice computer program and model to look at what is happening.
At that point you might be able to see clearly what is happening and stop guessing and you might even be able to start to try and formulate what an astronomical forcing is and perhaps even work out how to measure it to prove a theory.
We call that process science.
So are you a scientist or into voodoo and black magic Mr Nicola Scafetta your choice.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 24, 2013 at 7:09 am
Procrastinators or prognosticators?
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 23, 2013 at 11:55 pm
What on earth do my dead friend “Theo” and his concepts have to do with how hard I’ve looked for something? That’s nuts.
Regarding the extent of my knowledge (as opposed to how hard I’ve looked), Clive, if you want to get into a contest about the length of your johnson, you’ll have to do it with some other guy.
w.
It occurred to me some people do not get why Nicola Scafetta idea as it stands won’t work and why he has to boost the problem into GR/SR so it’s worth taking a quick post to explain it I guess.
The problem starts with Kepler and Newton and in there world the force of gravity is instantaneous it is not restricted to the speed of light … think about the delay in transmission to anything we send into space. Next you have the problem that they view the gravity as a force rather than an acceleration and then you have relativistic or speed effects of the bodies speed and they speed up and down as they orbit. The result is you end up with something that sort of starts to look like a chaotic system.
The problem you face is the inaccuracy in classic physics in all of that on a multi body solution is actually higher than the thing you are trying to measure so put bluntly classic physics will fail.
There are some simplified post-Newtonian ways to study all that but there is a big problem to tidy the system up we use the position of the sun as the reference frame and use Cowell’s method, Enke-style integrator or a few other approaches.
See the problem ….. by doing that you remove the very thing Mr Scafetta is trying to study the effect on the sun.
At this point we haven’t even added in perturbation from celestial objects we haven’t got under direct calculations (that is oscillations from small bodies we have ignored) which will also add in significant noise and error and start to make the system look even more chaotic.
So using a bit of science you can see the problem much clearer and you can see why the silly exercise to try and line up wiggly lines is never going to work because the system is somewhat chaotic and we know why but he is trying to ignore it.
So the first step that needs to happen is you need to boost the problem to account for the fact that the speed gravity force is at the speed of light not instantly because that effect alone will be creating massive chaos and error … ideally the whole problem needs to go GR/SR.
There may be a cheat way around the problem which would be by using one of the post-Newtonian methods on a point in space other than the sun so you could calculate what is happening at the sun but I would like to see a proper astrophysicist discussion on that and what errors are likely. That approach is well out of my ability to comment on.
richard verney says:
July 23, 2013 at 11:55 pm
Richard, as to whether it was necessary to recount the story, you don’t seem to understand who I’m writing for.
I’m writing for the kid in a secondary school in Brazil whose English is not all that good and who just found the site. I’m writing for the woman who loved science but dropped out of college to help her family. I’m writing for a lovely old lady who styles herself “Viejecita” and who lives in Spain. I’m writing for some joker fueled for three days on nothing but a chiapatti and a handful of rice who is in some public library in India, trying to understand this mysterious world just as I am. I’m writing for a high school student who just found Scafetta’s work and mistakenly thinks it is valuable.
So whether my recounting the story is “an insult” to your educated, well-honed, fine, college-bred, immaculately-tailored, meat-fueled intelligence is of absolutely no interest to me, Richard. I’m not writing for you.
Now, as you say above, “the majority” of the folks reading WUWT may indeed have heard the story … but that means the minority of people who read WUWT haven’t heard the story. And with as many folks as read this site, that’s thousands and thousands of people.
In addition, there are lots of folks who might have heard the story, but didn’t make the connection to what Scafetta had done. It’s not immediately obvious when reading his work that despite all his talk, he’s not using astronomically derived constants.
Finally, there are folks like you and Scafetta, who have heard the story, but who obviously didn’t understand why Freeman Dyson even told the story, much less grasp the meaning. There’s a point to the story, Richard, which is not the point you seem to have gotten. You say his message is that “in some incidences there may be no more substance than mere coincidence”. That’s not what Fermi said. He didn’t say the use of arbitrary parameters “suggests” that in Dyson’s work “there may be no more substance than mere coincidence” as you claim. That’s totally your imagination, he said nothing about “coincidence” at all.
Instead, he said that an equation with fistfuls of arbitrary parameters is useless. Why? Because with five parameters you can fit anything … and Scafetta is using twenty. DO THE MATH, RICHARD!
It’s not useless because the parameters are wrong, though, or because (as you claim) they might only coincidentally be right. It’s useless because an equation with enough tunable parameters can fit any curve, and as a result, the fit to the curve, no matter how accurate, means nothing.
Now, it’s obvious that Scafetta’s parameters are not astronomically based, other than in the way a Hollywood movie is “based on a true story”, which is to say not at all. If they were, he’d use 59.5766 years for his cycle, not 60 OR 61 as he’s done. They are all arbitrary. In addition to the period, he has also adjusted the amplitude and the phase of the cycles to make his formula work.
So Richard, perhaps you could try your hand at explaining something here. Why don’t you tell the lurkers and the kid in Brazil just what the moral of the Dyson story is, and explain to them how it applies to a formula with 20 FREAKIN’ ARBITRARY TUNABLE PARAMETERS!
Unless asking you to talk to the polloi is too much of an insult to your intelligence, in which case forget it, we’ll get there some other way.
w.
Nicola Scafetta says:
July 24, 2013 at 12:20 am
Nicola, you’ve been offered the opportunity to use the magnificent pulpit of WUWT to spread your theories, but only if you reveal your secret data and your secret computer code.
Instead, you prefer to abuse the thought processes of those who disagree with you. Not the best of choices.
Your unwillingness to reveal your code and data puts you in a very select group of people who purport to be scientists, but are unwilling to embrace the transparency needed for science to function. Your peers in this anti-scientific endeavor are folks like Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Lonnie Thompson, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, and others of the charming Climategate crowd.
However, if you want to stay in their company, you’re free to keep your secrets. And you’re free to continue say your opponents are idiots and that our minds are closed. After all, that’s such a powerful scientific argument, how could it lose?
There is another option. Thanks to Anthony’s kind invitation, you’re also free to come clean and do the scientific thing—lay out your work in public in all its gory detail, all the code, all the data, warts and all, and let people see if there is any there there.
That’s what I do with my work, and what every other serious scientist does with their work. We lay it out on the table, chapter and verse, hand around the hammers, and invite people to see if they can destroy it.
Whenever you’d like to be a serious scientist, you are invited to do the same.
Until then? Well, you likely won’t get a lot of traction around here …
w.
vukcevic says:
July 24, 2013 at 12:03 am
Thank, Vuk. Doubtful. The AMO is not that regular.
w.
Oh, yeah, Nicola, I wanted to re-emphasize one other thing. If you don’t want to take Anthony up on his generous offer, at a minimum you need to follow the path suggested by Joe Born, viz:
That seem like a very efficient way to determine if there are indeed long-term regular cycles in the temperature data as you claim.
So the time is now, Nicola. In English there’s a fine old saying, which is “Put up, or shut up.” It’s time for you to do that. You can’t continue to hide behind the handwaving.
Either you are willing to have your theories put to the test, or you are not. We cannot put them to the test unless you reveal your methods and your data and your code, it’s up to you. So either Joe Born’s way or Anthony’s way, you need to follow another excellent English dictum, which is that you need to “Put your money where your mouth is”. That means you need to back up your mouth with some actual data and actual calculations.
I’m really tired of listening to your million and one evasions, Nicola. Now it’s time for you to put your money where your mouth is. Joe’s way or Anthony’s way, put up or shut up.
w.
Willis Eschenbach: “Joe, if I’ve dismissed you when you were correct, my bad. There’s always more to learn.”
I realized too late that my comment came out as though I were renewing a complaint, which was not my intention. I was merely attempting, poorly, as it turned out, to emphasize that many and probably most of this site’s visitors view Mr. Eschenbach’s submissions critically, no matter how much they value his insights.
But this brings up a good point. It turns out that, in the most recent instance of the type to which I referred, Mr. Eschenbach did ultimately look into my comment more deeply, and he acknowledged his error publicly, as this site’s regulars know is his practice. If he paid that much attention to the musings of a no-credential layman, how much more likely is he to give due consideration to a Ph. D. physicist–if that physicist makes his case clearly and compellingly? And, although as I said we don’t take Mr. Eschenbach’s opinions as gospel, a positive opinion from him would, rightly or wrongly, make some of us more likely to allocate a portion of our limited time to investigating Dr. Scafetta’s work more thoroughly.
LdB,
While I agree with much of what you write, I do feel you are worrying too much about relativity. Yes, relatively is important and interesting. But Newtonain mechanics could better be described as “the low speed/low gravity limit of relativity” rather than “wrong”.
For the case or planetary orbits, relativity is a fairly minor correction. One of the most famous examples is the precession of Mercury. The classical prediction is that the perihelion will shift 532 arcsec/century. Relativity corrects this by 43 arcseconds to give a much better answer. But remember, this is a correction of only 0.012 degrees per century in one aspect of Mercury’s orbit. This is a “big” relativistic correction, but would not even be noticeable in Scaffetta’s work (even if his work does turn out to have any basis in physical causes). Delays in gravity within the solar system will also, I strongly suspect, be only exceedingly minor corrections. Relativity is NOT the problem with this paper.
vukcevic says:
July 24, 2013 at 12:03 am
Vuk, re your comment about the geomagnetic field, don’t get me wrong. I think that the electromagnetic aspects of the climate are one of the most poorly understood. I also think that electromagnetic effects play a much larger role in the climate than we realize.
I don’t think, however, that pulling cycles out of natural observational data will allow us to project those cycles into the future in any meaningful manner. As I said above, the AMO is not that regular.
w.
Willis Eschenbach says:
“Nicola, you’ve been offered the opportunity to use the magnificent pulpit of WUWT to spread your theories, but only if you reveal your secret data and your secret computer code.”
Willis, what are the secret data and secret codes that you want?
If you had read my paper you would know that data and code are public.
You have no arguments any more but only engage in defamation tactics, don’t you?
But let us assume that the data and codes are secret, (which are not) how can you criticized something that is secret?
Anthony is damaging himself a lot by giving credit to people like you.
REPLY: People like Willis? Let me tell you something Nicola, I’ve met both of you personally, and you are both fine thoughtful people. But if I had to choose who I’d want to publish a paper with, it would be Willis, because he has the capability to keep me from fooling myself with the types of data analysis that could lead to confirmation bias.
And Nicola, if you want to publish here, the offer still stands, including the requirement for data and code to allow replication of your work in that paper. That way we can determine if your analysis is real, or just a case of confirmation bias. If it is public, just point us to it. Thanks. – Anthony
@Willis
Now, it’s obvious that Scafetta’s parameters are not astronomically based, other than in the way a Hollywood movie is “based on a true story”, which is to say not at all. If they were, he’d use 59.5766 years for his cycle, not 60 OR 61 as he’s done. They are all arbitrary. In addition to the period, he has also adjusted the amplitude and the phase of the cycles to make his formula work
It’s worse Willis they can’t be a constant by the laws of GR … the speed of gravity is the speed of light and the gravity earth is seeing from the moon is the position the moon was on average 1.29 seconds ago. The gravity earth is seeing from the sun is it’s position 8 min and 20 seconds ago. The gravity from Jupiter earth is seeing was the position of Jupiter between 35 and 52 minutes ago.
Those delays mean the planetary cycles mean little the whole cycle sort of looks chaotic …. want a guess what the number for a proper alignment repeat cycle for the main 8 planets and our moon
86,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years that is 86 billion-trillion-trillion-trillion years
Now even 86 billion-trillion-trillion-trillion years might be optimistic for gravity repeats because that is a planetary alignment cycle and I am not sure that takes into account to make sure the planets are the same distance apart on each alignment
In between then and now there will be sort of chaotic cyclical stuff but it will vary wildly because of the delays …. what do you think the chances are to hold a correlation even with 20 parameters over that time span.
July 13, 2013 at 12:35 PM
I think the start of the temperature decline will commence within six months of the end of solar cycle 24 maximum and should last for at least 30+ years.
My question is how does the decline take shape, is it slow and gradual or in jagged movements as thresholds are met. I think some jagged movements then a leveling off then another jerk etc etc. Will thresholds be met?
I KNOW THEY ARE OUT THERE.
I think the maximum of solar cycle 24 ends within 6 months, and once the sun winds down from this maximum it is going to be extremely quiet.
Solar flux sub 72, although sub 90 is probably low enough.
Solar Wind sub 350 km/sec.
AP INDEX 5.0 or lower 98+ % of the time.
Solar Irradiance off .2% or greater.
UV light off upwards of 50% in the extreme short wavelengths.
This condition was largely acheived in years 2008-2010 but the number of sub- solar years of activity proceeding these readings back then was only 3 or 4 years, this time it will be over 8+ years of sub- solar activity, and no weak solar maximum will be forthcoming.
Lag times come into play mostly due to the oceans.
It is clear that thesalvatore del prete says:
greenhouse effect ,how effective it is ,is a result of energy coming into and leaving the earth climatic system. The warmer the oceans the more effective the greenhouse effect and vice versa.
With oceans cooling in response to a decrease in solar visible light the amounts of co2/water vapor will be on the decrease thus making the greenhouse effect less effective going forward. At the same time the albedo of earth will be on the increase due to more low clouds,ice and snow cover.
ROUTE CAUSE OF THE CLIMATE TO CHANGE
Very weak solar magnetic fields, and a declining weak unstable geomagnetic field, and all the secondary feedbacks associated with this condition.
SOME SECONDARY EFFECTS WITH WEAK MAGNETIC FIELDS
weaker solar irradiance
weaker solar wind
increase in cosmic rays
increase in volcanic activity
decrease in ocean heat content
a more meridional atmospheric circulation
more La Ninas ,less El Ninos
cold Pdo /Amo
I say the start of a significant cooling period is on our doorstep, it is months away. Once solar cycle 24 maximum ends it starts.
This has happened 18 times in the past 7500 years(little ice ages and or cooling periods ) ,number 19 is going to take place now.
Two of the most recent ones are the Maunder Minimum(1645-1700) and the Dalton Minimum(1790-1830).
I say this one 2014- 2050??
Reply
This sort of “cyclomania” and curve fitting can be very valuable as a pointer toward real ‘science’. But it is only a pointer. The next step is to self-consistently fit this new knowledge into previous knowledge — and then to predict new things.
It reminds me of a favorite science quote:
* I strongly second the suggestion that Scafetta “train” his fits with only part of the data and then see if it really does predict the rest of the data well.
* I also suggest that Scafetta try to quantify the sizes of the effects with the size of the causes. Do stronger causes correspond to bigger amplitudes?
Leif is in denial of past history and the data that shows clear correlations between solar magnetic field strength and climate change.
Willis, I think that, from another solar system, one could detect the presence of planets orbiting around the Sun by the induced wobbling.
Furthermore, I thought Dr. Scafetta’s model would get more explicit and refined, his explanations clearer. Maybe I was mistaken, I think.
@Tim Folkerts
Tim if the sun was transported into a wormhole and disappeared right now you would not know about it for 8 min and 20 sec. You would still have light and the earth would still act as if the sun was there.
The gravity earth experiences right now right here from the sun was relative to it’s position 8 minutes ago. In the 8 minutes everything moved the effect is massive you can’t say Newton gravity is okay it isn’t when trying to do this.
You are trying to equate the movement of the planets as creating an effect and you want to ignore the time delays …. seriously get real the errors are massive.
Joe Born says:
July 24, 2013 at 10:08 am
Thanks for that clarification, Joe. Your comments in the matter of my “black box” analysis of the GISS climate model were among those that set me on the right path there. One of the joys of doing science the way that I do it is that people do view each and every one of my submissions critically—and as in your case, it is often their insights which illuminate the correct pathways that will allow me to continue moving forward.
As a result, my ongoing scientific meanderings are the result of one of the strangest scientific collaborations imaginable, where I’m collaborating with everyone interested enough to assist in pushing the effort forwards with their comments and insights. I like to think that my work is my own, that I’m not writing one of these studies that have 26 co-authors. But if I were totally honest, I’d have to list dozens and dozens of co-authors for each of my posts …
In the process of writing over four hundred posts for WUWT, I’ve found that being wrong is sometimes more important than being right. As Edison observed, it’s important to know ways NOT to do something. I even have a post somewhere titled “Wrong Again”, and I was. …
You are correct that it’s very important to me to acknowledge publicly when I’m wrong. If someone shows that I’m in error, whether they are man, woman or child, whether they have a PhD or never finished high school, that’s important information that should not be left in question. They are pointing the right direction, not me, and since I want people to go the right direction, I need to state that publicly. That’s why I apologized to Dr. Scafetta above, people were right, I was wrong, I shouldn’t have used a howitzer on him. Live and learn.
It’s also a good practice to undergo the public humiliation of having to admit when I’m wrong, because I’m too damn smart for my own good, and it is a healthy reminder that while I’m often right, the key word in that sentence isn’t “right” … it’s “often” …
My best to you,
w.
LdB says:
July 24, 2013 at 10:28 am
Relativity is in the “true but not relevant” pile for the subject under discussion. The relative speeds of the objects are far, far below the range where relativistic effects rise above the level of noise.
w.
Nicola Scafetta has a much better grasp then Leif, the problem however with his approach is he wants everything to fit into a cycle, with somekind of a predictive result due to cycles.
It won’t work that way mainly due to the following factors.
The beginning state of the climate is going to greatly effect the end result of the climate even if the same forcings effecting the climate are applied.
Secondly the magnitude of solar/geomagnetic changes and there durations are always going to be different which means at times thresholds can be reached while at other times climatic thresholds will not be reached.
This means the climate can stay in the same climatic regime if thresholds are not met and have a gradual trend down or up in temperature which is what Nicola subcribes to, due to cycles..
On the other hand HOWEVER , if thresholds are met then abrupt climatic shifts can occur within a decade and the climate could swing into another climatic regime, which Nicola does not grasp or understand.
Therefore the end result for a climate change will be impossible to predict other then the general trend in temperatures that being up and down.
Also he believes in a GHG effect, which is true but the GHG effect is a result of energy in the earth/climatic system and will lessen if solar out put decreases.
Why? Cooler oceans will result in less evaporation (less water vapor in atm.) and absorb more CO2. Less water vapor and less Co2 in atmosphere will result in a weaker greenhouse gas effect.
DATA SUBSTANCIATES THIS FACT IN THAT CO2 CONCENTRATIONS FOLLOW THE TEMPERATURE RATHER THEN LEAD IT.
LbD says: “Tim if the sun was transported into a wormhole and disappeared right now you would not know about it for 8 min and 20 sec. You would still have light and the earth would still act as if the sun was there.”
But no one is talking about suddenly removing the sun! We are talking about the slowly varying gravity of planets pulling on the earth and/or sun. Using the value of tidal effect from Jupiter 20 minutes ago instead of the value right now is not going in have a noticeable impact on periods measured in years.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
July 24, 2013 at 10:48 am
Science cannot now predict precisely when the next glaciation in the cycles of Pleistocene ice sheet formation will occur, but nevertheless another one will happen within 10,000 years & probably much sooner than that.
The Holocene so far has been a cooler than average interglacial, & for at least the past 3000 years has been getting colder, despite its climb out of the LIA for the past 150 or so years.
I don’t know if an exhaustive list of confirmed or plausible causes of the observed cycles has been compiled, but they fall into two categories: terrestrial & extra-terrestrial.
Among the former are plate tectonics, oceanic circulation, water, GHGs besides water vapor, organisms & other known & unknown factors. Proposals among the latter are the solar outputs, planets, moon, solar system dust, cosmic rays, position of the sun in its orbit of the galactic center, etc.
Earth’s climate is a complex system. No surprise that GIGO computer models of it suck & lack predictive skill.
I am confident that the present prolonged solar minimum period is going to once again result in lower temperatures going forward, with a definite downward trend starting in year 2014,once the weak maximum of solar cycle 24 passes by.
The question is not if the temperatures are going to decline but rather how they decline and by how much.
Again that will depend on thresholds which are out there being met or approached, but what does it take to meet a particular threshold that could set up a positive climatic feedback which would overwhelm the inherent negative climatic feedbacks in the earth climatic system?
I think by decade end much will be resolved from proving the AGW theory is BS,to showing a definite solar and geomagnetic climate relationship. If were lucky revealing possible thresholds.
Time will tell..
Salvatore Del Prete says:
July 24, 2013 at 10:32 am
Translation:
“Leif is wrong and I’m right.”
Salvatore, such “science by assertion” goes nowhere. If you think Leif is wrong in something that he has said, you need to do the following to get any traction on WUWT:
1. QUOTE WHAT HE SAID that you disagree with.
2. State exactly where and why you think his claim is wrong,
3. Provide citations or evidence or logic or mathematics to back up your assertion.
Simply saying someone is wrong, or worse yet that they are “in denial”, is nothing but unpleasant mudslinging.
Let me say that I would love nothing more than for someone to provide clear, unmistakable, statistically solid evidence of “clear correlations between solar magnetic field strength and climate change”. These have been hypothesized in dozens of forms ever since 1801 when William Herschel claimed a correspondence between sunspots and wheat prices. I’m in the process of writing a post on that, and guess what? The news is not good … and that’s always been the problem. People have looked for such solar-climate connections now for two hundred years. If they were strong and clear and repeatable, by now they’d be part of the mainstream explanation of climate. But they are not. They are weak and sporadic and variable.
Chaotic systems are ultimately frustrating that way. There are what look like cycles for a while, and then they fade away and some other cycle takes over. This makes the analysis incredibly difficult, and requires long, accurate climate datasets that generally don’t exist.
Meanwhile, humans are cycle-finding mechanisms. We love finding cycles in things, they make the world predictable, we’ve been building Stonehenges in honor of cycles since forever … which means, unfortunately, that sometimes we ascribe meaning to cycles that have no meaning at all, transient cycles in the endless eddies of the climate.
One problem that I have with all of the solar-based theories is that the luminosity of the sun, by the accepted physical theories, has increased by about 5% over the last half billion years … but the temperature of the earth hasn’t gone up by 5%. That would be a warming of about 14°C (25°F), and there is no sign of that in any of the proxy records. Instead, it appears to have been very gradually cooling.
My explanation of this puzzle is that the temperature of the earth is NOT a function of the amount of available incoming energy. Instead, the temperature is kept within a narrow band by the action of the emergent climate phenomena like thunderstorms, cyclones, the El Nino/La Nina pump, the PDO, and others. As a result, neither small changes in CO2 nor even much larger historical changes in sun strength have much effect on the temperature at all.
I say that this natural regulation of the temperature is why evidence for the solar-climate connection is weak, infrequent, and tends to disappear when we have more data.
Some folks say “It’s the sun, stupid”, when asked about what rules the planetary temperature.
To me that’s like saying “It’s the furnace, stupid” when asked about what rules the house temperature, when in fact, it’s the thermostat, stupid.
Note that this doesn’t rule out a solar effect on clouds via e.g. solar magnetic field variations –> cosmic ray variations –> cloud variations.
However, again any such an effect will be opposed by the homeostatic emergent phenomena. Remember that all of those phenomena are temperature based. That is to say, they don’t react to the amount of incoming energy or to the amount of cloud cover. They react to thresholds in the local temperature. And as a result, the evidence for such a cosmic ray –> climate effect is weak at best.
w.
I’ve started looking at this paper in my spare minutes here and there. So far:
Started by reading Scafetta_EE_2013.pdf through to get a general idea of paper.
1. Intro tells us:
1. GST has increased .8-.85C, .5-.55C since the ’70s, CO2 has been increasing
in the atmosphere, this is AGWT.
2. AGWT and GCM’s crap out against the record, so new theory by Scafetta.
2. Sources of uncertainties in GCM’s. Ok, don’t care right now.
3. AGWT agrees only with outdated hockey stick reconstructions. Ok, don’t care right now.
4. DECADAL AND MULTIDECADAL CLIMATIC OSCILLATIONS ARE SYNCHRONOUS TO MAJOR ASTRONOMICAL CYCLES — kerblamo, found something good.
1. Geophysical systems are characterized by oscillations at multiple time scales from a few hours to hundred thousands and millions of years [65]. ok good.
2. Oscillations found in global and regional temp recs, in ocean oscillations, & solar proxy records. fine.
Figure 5 A – shows HADCRUT4 GST after detrending (subtracting .0000297*(t-1850)^2-.384), from 1850 to 2100. Looks nice and sinusoidal. ****This shouldn’t be hard to reproduce**** but for details I must see Scafetta [8].
Hmm. Scafetta [8] appears to be ‘Scafetta, N., 2010. Empirical evidence for a celestial origin of the climate oscillations and its implications. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 72, 951-970.’. Good, I can get this here (http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/pdf/ATP3162.pdf).
I skim through and see fig. 3. AhHa! I think to myself. This looks good, power spectrum estimates of global temperature, showing 60, 20, and 9 year cycles. (I’ve become sidetracked, I know) This must be an important source of what Nicola is talking about. I presume we get this from discrete Fourier transform of the global temperature record, but the reference is to Ghil et al., 2002. The caption tells me that the maximum entropy method and the multi taper methods were used. OK, time to look at Ghil et. al. 2002, title ‘ADVANCED SPECTRAL METHODS FOR CLIMATIC TIME SERIES’. I google this and find a link (www.atmos.umd.edu/~ide/data/research/…/ssa_revgeophys02.pdf)
in ssa_revgeophys02.pdf,
I see section 3.4 Multitaper Method. The discussion under 3.2 Classic Spectral Estimates mentions discrete Fourier transforms and the power leakage / systematic distortion that results, so I begin to think, uh oh, multitaper and maximum entropy must be ways to improve on well known discrete Fourier transforms.
Ok, at this point I pause to report and put in my two cents.
If we were talking about simply performing the classic discrete Fourier transform on HADCRUT data to look at the power spectrum, I’d be more inclined to agree that nobody needs to be walked through this. But now it seems we’re using more advanced methods. I don’t do this sort of analysis, so for all I know these are well known, widely used techniques. Still, this causes me to lean towards the ‘show your work’ end of the argument. Right or wrong, I think I can find 10 guys who know what a discrete Fourier transform is for every guy you can find me who knows about multitaper and/or maximum entropy, although I could be wrong.
Further, I’m in three papers deep in trying to follow what’s going on at this point and I haven’t gotten past the first figure in the original paper. A walkthrough of the core calculations would save considerable pain.
Just my two cents so far.
Tme will tell. Again I think it is the magnetic field strength of the sun and all the secondary effects that are associated with it.
Again the beginning state of the climate has much to do with the end results.
What drives the earth climatic system.Answer is the sun. Therefore that does not mean any change on the sun will effect the climate in a significant way, or have the same effect on the climate each time it happens but what it does mean is a changewith the sun which is strong enough in magnitude and duration should have an effect on the climatic system.It must sonce the sun is the DRIVER off the climatic system.
This present prolonged solar minimum is the first time since the Dalton Minimum where it looks like the changes on the sun will be large enough in magnitude /duration to have a climatic impact.
Past history clearly shows that each time the sun has gone into a prolonged minimum state the temperatures have gone down ,while each time the sun has been in a very active state the temperatures have gone up.How much clearer could it be?
.
If you read the first post I posted you will see I mention many solar parameters that have to be met and the many secondary effects I think wilL result. i wil restate the parameters.
Until they are met no one can say if what I am saying is correct or not correct.
LUMINOSITY OF THE SUN VERSUS TEMPERATURE
That is not going to hold up because it is also related to the intial state of the earth in regards to the climate situation geo magnectic field strength, atmospheric composition etc etc., and the secondary effects from a change in the sun.
This decade I feel is going to clear up once for al how much of an effect solar magnetic field strength will have on the climate
PARAMETERS NEEEDED
SOLAR FLUX SUB 90
SOLAR WIND 350KM/SEC. OR LESS
AP INDEX 5.0 OR LESS
SOLAR IRRADIANCE OFF BY .2% OR MORE
UV EXTREME SHORT WAVELENGTH OFF UPWORDS OF 50%
Those above conditions following a period of sub solar activity in general of at least 5 to 10 years and lasting in duration over a significant period of time.(2 plus years) The present prolonged solar minimum started in year 2005, as a reference.
These conditions have not be met since the Dalton Solar MIMIMUM, so at best it is very premature to say solar changes have no effect on climate, since the solar conditions needed have yet to occur soince the Dalton Solar Minimum.
In my opinion the factors keeping temperatures from falling more since 2005, were the weak maximum of solar cycle 24, and the ocean heat content which rose last century in response to strong solar activity, and the lack of accumulation of years of sub-solar activity. This is all fading away as we head deeper into this decade Time will tell.
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 24, 2013 at 7:50 am
What is clear is that none of the procrastinators know what Landscheidt used to predict grand minima. If you do not know this basic piece of information, you know nothing.
But we, and you, do know this. Because Theo told us:
Dear Theo makes the observation that a big hand is 180 years and that half a big hand is 90 years. With that in hand, so to speak, he says “Forecasting is easy. The next minimum is expected about 2007, and the next peak about 2021. Consequently, the observation of golden-section points within cycles seems to be essential” Furthermore “The vertical dotted line marks the starting phase (1933) of a big hand. This dynamically fundamental period coincided with establishment of Stalin’s and Hitler’s dictatorship” which seems to be important as well. By going forward to the next minimum in the 90-year sunspot cycle� half of a “big hand” cycle of 180 years� is expected about the year 2026. So an essential feature is, as he says, that ‘Forecasting is easy’, just count forward half a big hand from the rise of Hitler.
Thanks, Mark.
I feel your pain; Up to my chin in supposedly supporting papers but still struggling to get past the beginning of the paper at hand.
I do predict that many of the questions and different opinions that have been presented on this board will be answered one way or the other, before this decade ends..
We will know who is correct and who is not correct.
William, contary to your opinion the news is very good in regards to lower temperatures and the Dalton Solar Minimum.
If you try to use an increase in volcanic activity as a scape goat it will not fly since an increase in geological activity is one of the many secondary effects associated with a prolonged solar minimum period.
Another very significant secondary effect of a prolonged solar minimum period is a more -AO/NAO.
Evidence for this type of atmospheric circulation very strong for both the Maunder Minimum and Dalton Minimum.
One of the problems of those that want to dismiss the sun is they do not know or do not want to concede the secondary effects. An increase in cosmic rays more clouds ,yet another example.
It is not just solar irradiance changes although that is part of it.
Willis
Re your comment
Not to worry, I find discord of opinions stimulating, so back to the cycling.
– As far as I can ascertain, it all depends on the length of solar magnetic cycle; the AMO length may vary anywhere between 55 and 70 years, so it is an irregular oscillation, which leaves deep imprint on the N. Hemisphere’s and by implication on the global temperature data. For last hundred years, based on the solar periodicity (as agreed with Dr.S) the AMO would average around 64.5 years.
My reconstruction for the AMO, based on the solar cycles starting at 1700 gives following approximate periods: 66, 54, 58 & 64 years (peak to peak). Surprisingly this does make an average of 60 years for 4 AMO cycles (this is the first time I actually looked at it), I would expect that an astronomy factor should be more regular.
The AMO troughs are relatively uniform at -0.25C, while the peaks vary from +0.1C at time of Dalton to about 0.3C for the current.
In my calculations the AMO shows a lag of about 15 years, I am also aware that CO2 people have considered similar number, but associated with totally different factors.
Thus no long term prediction possible using the geomagnetics.
– I have come to think that the geomagnetic change may be just a proxy for the tectonics of the N. Atlantic, however seeing recently some comments about HAARP experiment, although far-fetched it may be possible that the combination of solar and geo magnetic fields interactions over Arctic by moving altitude of the magnetosphere, may affect the Arctic’s atmospheric pressure oscillations.
Both of the above are regularly dismissed as a nonsense by our good doc Svalgaard, which indeed it may be, but that doesn’t bother me too greatly, I just record what is in there, make few observations, and from time to time contradict my previous findings.
Only thing I believe is that ‘nature is ruled by a cause and consequence’ and do not subscribe to the chaos theory.
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 24, 2013 at 11:20 am
WOW!
If I were the referee you’d just be declared the winner.
I hope everybody reads that. I may have to read it daily myself, my brain so badly wants to see a cycle or at least an amalgam of cycles in the temperature record but alas it’s probably a wild goose chase.
John West says:
July 24, 2013 at 1:12 pm
Does this proxy temperature record look like cycles to you, or merely chaotic, random noise?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png
I’m seeing cycles, but maybe that’s just my eye & brain playing tricks on me.
@LdB
It may be heresy to point out this study, but please see the following partial Abstract (and the associated link to the complete study) with regard to gravitation’s propagation speed. I do not know which is right or if even if I understand the finer distinctions, but the study does seem to speak with some authority.
If it is just BS, sorry my bad.
F. Ross says:
July 24, 2013 at 2:30 pm
————-
I don’t know if that’s correct or not. Sort of cool if it is. I can send faster than light messages, all I need to do is transform really massive amounts of matter into energy and back again to implement the gravity telegragh!
🙂
Anthony,
which data are you talking about? Which code?
why don’t you try to read my paper with an open mind and point clearly to the “mysterious” data you want?
Give some specific “name” to your requests, Anthony.
As I said, all data, equations and math analysis are available and clearly stated in the paper.
See Anthony, if you want not to be fooled, the only way is to study and learn by yourself instead of just believing in Willis, or in me or in somebody else.
You are too easily forgetting that my papers are peer-reviewed by at least two specialists in the field plus the editors, who are experienced scientists. And I have published many papers in different scientific journals.
If you do not want to be fooled and at the same time you do not want to study and learn by yourself, instead of blindly trusting an individual such as Willis who has no scientific credentials, you should trust the scientific process itself.
If you think that Willis is at the level or above the scientific process you need to invite him to write a professional comment at the journal so that his opinions may be properly addressed by the scientific process itself.
If you agree that Willis is below the scientific process, you cannot trust him when a professional scientist tells you that Willis is making up things because he does not have a sufficient understanding of science and does not have the humility of learning.
If you do not what to trust anybody, then in science you need to trust “nature” itself.
I did a forecast two years ago. Did you forget it?
When I proposed it, Leif immediately stated that the data contradicted it already.
Well it was not true. My forecast is here
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model_1
against the updated temperature. As you see the things are going well up to now.
If you believe in Willis more than in Nature, you are acting outside the scientific realm.
“Because of all things, the mystery ingredient in Scafetta’s equation is…”
Or, maybe there is no secret ingredient</i?
L. Ross, thanks for the link to Tom Van Flandern’s article; Interesting proposal for adoption of Lorentzian Relativity to replace Einstein’s Special Relativity.
Gravity would then propagate at a speed not less than 2×10^10 c.
That sounds fast!
Dr. Scafetta,
I’ve been reading your paper, although I have not had nearly as much time to devote to it as I would like. In following the papers your paper referred to, I came across ‘Scafetta, N., 2010. Empirical evidence for a celestial origin of the climate oscillations and its implications. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 72, 951-970.’ with a very interesting graph (figure 3). I’ve gathered that the methods used to produce the graph (multitaper and maximum entropy) are explained in Ghil et. al. 2002, ‘ADVANCED SPECTRAL METHODS FOR CLIMATIC TIME SERIES’.
I was wondering what implementation of the algorithms described in Ghil et. al. 2002 you used. For example, is there a programming library or a set of routines from some other source that you used? Did you perhaps instead code your own implementation? It seems unlikely that you computed these values by hand. Could you point me to this code, utility, or program?
Thanks,
Mark Bofill
Dr. Scafetta,
I most humbly beg your pardon, I see that you have already given me my answer, here:
I apologize for missing that.
Regards,
Mark Bofill
@Willis and others
=> Relativity is in the “true but not relevant” pile for the subject under discussion. The relative speeds of the objects are far, far below the range where relativistic effects rise above the level of noise
You are completely wrong the induced error is completely chaotic it adds up every second it becomes massive very quickly.
.You want to see the effect at play scientifically program a model car to follow a sine wave and then introduced a small tiny error via a pseudo random number generator.
Now your challenge try and write a program to track the motion of the model car ….. good luck you are going to need more that Scafettas 20 parameters.
Do you see the problem the error is not constant and that’s what SR does to the problem the error is small but the longer you run the timespan the problem compounds for every second.
That is the problem in space you can actually get totally lost because there is systematic and compounding chaotic errors …. ask NASA
I am sorry Willis but you are wrong about that statement and you can see why if you think about it.
@Willis
I should say there is a way to sort of try and reduce down the search of where the car is likely to be in the above example. You draw the programmed sine wave the you add a line plus and minus the random error you add multiplied by time.
So what you end up with is a triangle with ever increasing size and the car will be somewhere in that range from the two limits bounded by the triangle at each time along the path.
The obvious problem is the unknown of the car position grows more and more the longer you run the simulation.
Scaeffa’s problem is worse that example because the planets are doing ellipses so you search area comes back on itself.
Anthony, just an addition to make sure that you are getting the point.
Willis stated that he is asking for data and code, by repeating your own request etc.
********
Willis Eschenbach say: July 24, 2013 at 9:51 am
Nicola, you’ve been offered the opportunity to use the magnificent pulpit of WUWT to spread your theories, but only if you reveal your secret data and your secret computer code.
*******
Ok, your request (Anthony’s one) is based on your unwillingness to read my papers to figure out the data, procedure etc., which are clearly written there.
However, the same request from Willis is surprising. Please note that this implies that Willis has criticized my work without knowing the data that I use, the mathematical procedure that I use and the analysis that I use.
Are you able to understand that Willis criticism is invalid?
He essentially stated that he has not read my papers, but he criticized them, nevertheless.
Do you really trust this guy? Are you so sure that he is not fooling you in some way?
He is essentially cheating and very badly.
He is behaving like a student that makes up a story without having done his homework before.
Look now at Willis article and compare it with the comment by
Mark Bofill July 24, 2013 at 11:50 am
Do you note the substantial difference? Mark is trying to read my papers with the purpose to understand what I did, a fact that Willis did not do.
Do you understand the substantial difference?
Next time ask Mark Bofill to write something instead of asking Willis.
Or ask me, which would be even better.
REPLY: Dr. Scaffetta, this is a simple request, one I make often of others. Where is your SI (supplemental info) for the paper that contains your data and worksheets. Things like Excel spreadsheets and databases and formulae? Surely such things exist. If you can’t or won’t produce those things to allow independent replication, then what you have done is not science, but simply opinion. – Anthony
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 24, 2013 at 8:40 am
Regarding the extent of my knowledge (as opposed to how hard I’ve looked), Clive, if you want to get into a contest about the length of your johnson, you’ll have to do it with some other guy.
Willis, this is not a question of johnson’s, but rather your level of expertise in reviewing literature in the scientific domain. I will repeat the question that so far Leif or Anthony has also failed to answer. This is basic stuff that anyone criticizing planetary theory should be totally aware of. Your chance to put up or shut up.
Give me some detail on your knowledge, what major concept does Theo use to predict grand minima??
LdB says: “You are completely wrong the induced error is completely chaotic it adds up every second it becomes massive very quickly.”
If that were true, then predictions of planetary motion would be impossible. Quite to the contrary, the motions are quite predictable. Even small variations from Newtonian predictions were enough to send people scrambling to find Neptune. Milankovitch cycles are calculated for the earth over periods of 100,000’s of years — again impossible if chaos quickly ruled the motions. The “serious error” in Mercury’s precession was a fraction of a degree per century! People routinely calculate where near-earth asteroids are 30-100 years in advance to see if they might hit the earth.
What specific aspect of the planetary motions do you think is massively chaotic? How far do you think a planet wanders from simple newtonian predictions in a century?
Clive E. Birkland says:
“Give me some detail on your knowledge…”
Do you demand the CV of everyone? Because in case you are not aware of it, Willis is a published, peer reviewed author.
That’s enough for me. If you can make points using your own knowledge, good for you. But this isn’t a contest, this is an attempt to get to the heart of an interesting scientific question.
I’m not taking sides here. But the important thing is to separate the wheat from the chaff: verifiable science from supposition.
As Leif noted somewhere above, cyclomania seems an incurable affliction; this is a very astute observation. Too bad for the victims though.
dbstealey says:
July 24, 2013 at 5:59 pm
Science demands sufficient knowledge of the subject before peer review can be performed. Journal editors perform this task in their selection criteria and do not employ reviewers from unassociated fields. This is how peer review works.
I and Willis might be published in journals, but we would not be asked to review in a field beyond our expertize.
Willis is not qualified to review papers concerning solar/planetary science.
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 24, 2013 at 5:25 pm
Give me some detail on your knowledge, what major concept does Theo use to predict grand minima??
The dear Theo makes the observation that a big hand is 180 years and that half a big hand is 90 years. With that in hand, so to speak, he says “Forecasting is easy. The next minimum is expected about 2007, and the next peak about 2021. Consequently, the observation of golden-section points within cycles seems to be essential” Furthermore “The vertical dotted line marks the starting phase (1933) of a big hand. This dynamically fundamental period coincided with establishment of Stalin’s and Hitler’s dictatorship” which seems to be important as well. By going forward to the next minimum in the 90-year sunspot cycle, half of a “big hand” cycle of 180 years, is expected about the year 2026. So an essential feature is, as he says, that ‘Forecasting is easy’, just count forward half a big hand from the rise of Hitler.
If you feel that Theo did not explain himself fully, feel free to add supplementary detail as far as you know any.
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 24, 2013 at 6:16 pm
Science demands sufficient knowledge of the subject before peer review can be performed. Journal editors perform this task in their selection criteria and do not employ reviewers from unassociated fields. This is how peer review works.
we would not be asked to review in a field beyond our expertize.
Willis is not qualified to review papers concerning solar/planetary science.
I am asked by Journal editors to review papers concerning solar/planetary science several times each month, including some of Scafetta’s. I don’t know if Geof has submitted any such papers and where [if he did]. Perhaps you could enlighten us on this point.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 24, 2013 at 6:22 pm
If productive scholars such as yourself are put upon twice a week or more to review papers, then I fear that peer review may be interfering with the practice of science. Maybe the world needs fewer but better papers. Regrettably the prime imperative to publish or perish vitiates this ideal situation.
@ milodonharlani
We established up thread that Milankovitch cycles are indeed climate drivers, Willis is talking about the smaller variations.
Somewhere up the thread Willis says :
“Now, it’s obvious that Scafetta’s parameters are not astronomically based, other than in the way a Hollywood movie is “based on a true story”, which is to say not at all. If they were, he’d use 59.5766 years for his cycle, not 60 OR 61 as he’s done”
I would not be surprised if constraining one parameter to be exactly 59.5766 and then re-optimizing all the others, would produce a fit just as good as the existing one. Then it would of course be “proof” that Jupiter/Saturn caused the effects.
Another possible test, apart from choosing different training sets as has been mentioned, would be to use different parts of the globe. Scafetta has parameterized his theory against global data (some of which is modelled rather than being actual data) but, since the planetary motions are an external perturbation, if any effects exist they must be detectable at every point i.e.in local data as well as global. So, why not try this – take two long series of temperature records from different parts of the globe, for example North America and Europe, carry out the parametrization for one of them, and see if it fits the other. If it does, they may be something in the idea, but if it does not then the whole thing is garbage.
Nicola Scafetta says:
July 24, 2013 at 10:26 am
That’s great news, Nicola. However, I read your paper, and I didn’t see such links. So I’m sure you won’t mind providing
1. A link, not to the paper describing the data, but to the actual data that you used.
2. A link, not to the paper describing the computer code, but to the actual computer code that you used.
Note that to judge your work, we need to see not only the computer code that uses your twenty chosen parameters to produce the results.
We also need to see the computer code by which you assigned values to those various parameters of each cycle. That is to say, how did you select the period, the phase, and the amplitude for each of your six different cycles?
I look forward to your links. To clarify, we need three links—one to the dataset(s) you used, one to the computer code that established the value of your parameters, and one to the computer code that used those parameters to create your published results. PLEASE don’t give me links to papers you’ve written. That’s not what’s needed to understand and replicate your work. We need the data and the computer code.
Nicola, you are free to either provide those links or not. But please, don’t say “Read my papers” again. I’ve read them. I’m not impressed. I know that Leif has read them. He’s not impressed. You saying “read my papers” to me for the fifty-fifth time is not impressive. You telling me to learn about the tides is not impressive. Put up or shut up.
If you want to impress anyone, if you want to have any credibility here on WUWT, provide the three links.
On the other hand, if you want to wave your hands and make new claims and excuses, well, I can’t stop you.
Your choice,
w.
milodonharlani says:
July 24, 2013 at 6:34 pm
If productive scholars such as yourself are put upon twice a week or more to review papers, More like once a week.
peer review may be interfering with the practice of science.
Many papers are easily dealt with. A few requires more in-depth analysis, and there is a benefit to have to articulate a review. The reviewer also learns from it.
Maybe the world needs fewer but better papers. Regrettably the prime imperative to publish or perish vitiates this ideal situation.
One major paper per first author per year would seem a good rate. Unfortunately, there is a growing tendency to have very many authors, many of which only made a marginal [if any] contribution. In a few cases that is justified, especially papers that report on the results of experiments that are team works of hundreds of scientists, but most often it is not. I have seen papers that contradict each other, but where the same author appears in both papers somewhere down the list of authors.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 24, 2013 at 6:17 pm
If you feel that Theo did not explain himself fully, feel free to add supplementary detail as far as you know any.
There are better papers that fully explain the detail. That you nor Willis are not aware of the basic principles or method attests to your combined knowledge.
In simple terms Theo used solar torque measurements to predict grand minima. This torque is a product of the solar orbit about the SSB, the 4 outer planets control the orbit path and torque.
Theo noticed during past grand minima that torque extreme (very low values of torque) occurred and indeed grouped together around the time of past grand minima. This phenomenon is also known as the “zero crossing” and occurs when the path of the Sun travels close to the SSB and can only happen when Neptune, Uranus and Saturn are together and opposing Jupiter.
Theo incorrectly identified the wrong planetary alignment that is associated with grand minmia, but he was close. We now know the exact alignment that corresponds with all grand minima throughout the Holocene which happens to be occurring now.
Of interest to those looking for exact reproducing cycles, you will not find them. The alignments required to alter the solar path change every cycle, each cycle (N/U conjunction) can have 2-4 alignments of varying strength, thus there is no distinct repeating cycle that will show in Fourier type analysis, but weaker cycles (204 etc) show up purely because of the frequency of certain groups of possible alignments that might be more common. This is what Abreu, Steinhilber, McCraken and Beer etc are picking up from their Holocene data.
Nicola’s deals with grand minima, but is more known for his 60 year cycle that appears to correlate with ocean cycles such as the PDO.
If you were informed you might take this data more seriously, many now are indeed looking at this data in this new emerging field. You can continue to play blind freddy but will risk being left on the scrap heap of solar science.
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 24, 2013 at 8:03 pm
In simple terms Theo used solar torque measurements to predict grand minima.
There are no measurements of such torque. I invite you to point out where in Theo’s paper http://bourabai.narod.ru/landscheidt/golden.htm he uses measured solar torque [should be planetary torques if anything]. We have in the past here at WUWT discussed those unphysical assertions [for example the postulated exchanges of Angular Momentum] several times and found them severely wanting.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 24, 2013 at 8:01 pm
The number of authors per paper in Nature or Science over the past 50 years or century or since 1869 or 1880 might be instructive. No doubt responsible review can be educational, as is writing or preparing a lecture.
milodonharlani says:
July 24, 2013 at 8:21 pm
The number of authors per paper in Nature or Science over the past 50 years … might be instructive.
http://www.nature.com/nature/history/full/nature06243.html
@Anthony
=> REPLY: Dr. Scaffetta, this is a simple request, one I make often of others. Where is your SI (supplemental info) for the paper that contains your data and worksheets. Things like Excel spreadsheets and databases and formulae? Surely such things exist. If you can’t or won’t produce those things to allow independent replication, then what you have done is not science, but simply opinion. – Anthony
You already know the answer as well as I do Anthony he can’t of done that or else he would have already realized that what he is trying to do is impossible.
Nicola Scafetta please please go and read a very basic scientific detailing of why we have to include the use of relativity in the earth GPS system … if you do nothing else do that one thing.
We can’t doctor or fudge the position of the satellite in that system and they really aren’t even moving that much relative to us
If GR/SR effects were not properly taken into account, a navigational fix based on the GPS constellation would be false after only 2 minutes, and errors in global positions would continue to accumulate at a rate of about 10 kilometers each day.
Your assumption of your work is based on a correlation to orbital effects that are millions of kilometers longer than the GPS system and with many more bodies.
Please tell me you are sort of grasping why the errors quickly compounds and I don’t care how many parameters you add in even if you are correct in your original assumption the longer you try and extend the timeframe the worse the error gets.
If you look at the robot car problem I gave to Willis above you will rather quickly be able to work out there is a sine wave implicit in the data but you can never predict the behavior of the car even knowing that I encoded a sine wave in the car movement.
Surely you can see why no matter what point you align the sinewave to the error will compound out from that point both hindcasting and forecasting.
None of this is rocket science you will be doing your model from here till the end of time and you will never match the prediction for more than a brief time.
Your problem is the errors in your system compound and they compound much quicker than you could ever believe and half the idiot comments on here didn’t even realize that SR alone would bring this approach to it’s knees.
For the love of all things science go and look at the GPS system and see why your approach is doomed to failure even if your idea that planetary cycles are involved.
You have no option but to correct for SR/GR for your analysis to work.
Seriously at a science level this is not hard most first year physics students get it you are wasting your time with the way you are trying to approach the problem take a big hint from the hard sciences who do this properly.
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 24, 2013 at 5:25 pm
I used to correspond with Ted Landschiedt, I never saw him sign his emails “Theo”. I corresponded with him because I was trying to understand his method. However, despite his trying to explain it to me, and me trying to understand it, I could never grab hold of the details. I ended up much like Leif above, who described the Landscheidt method thusly:
However, in the process I did my own extensive investigation of the barycentric movement of the sun, including writing a spreadsheet to give the sun’s 3-D location w.r.t. the center of mass of the solar system. And I can assure you, I learned a lot in the doing of that nice piece of analysis.
Now, it’s possible you have done something comparably detailed and complex with respect to investigating and trying to understand barycentric movement, I don’t know.
What I don’t understand, however, is why my knowledge of either Ted’s methods (which is good but obviously incomplete), or of the barycentric movement of the sun, has anything to do with Scafetta’s twenty arbitrary parameters.
Regards,
w.
PS—If you think a deep understanding of Ted Landsheidt’s work is “basic stuff that anyone criticizing planetary theory should be totally aware of”, you have a huge misconception of Ted’s importance in the larger world. You could get a PhD in planetary theory and never hear his name at all.
Nor has anyone, myself included, been able to take his work and make any advances on it … what has your contribution to Ted’s work been, for example?
So Ted’s work remains a tantalizing, fascinating, and poorly understood backwater of science. Might turn into something someday, and you’re welcome to try …
But judging people’s knowledge on the basis of what they know of Ted Landscheidt’s methods, though, that’s just bizarre.
PPS—FWIW, Ted’s theory, reduced to its simplest terms, was that the level of activity of the sun depends on the rate of change of angular momentum of the sun as it orbits the barycenter (center of mass of the solar system). He contended (and I don’t know if it’s true) that the total momentum of the sun had to stay constant, and that it was composed of translational momentum PLUS rotational momentum of the sun about its own center of mass PLUS rotational momentum of the sun around the barycenter. His claim was that as one of those went down the others had to go up. The resulting change in the sun’s rotational speed induced turmoil and turbulence in the sun as it sped up and slowed down.
I always questioned that explanation, because it seemed to me that while the total momentum of the solar system is conserved, the momentum of any individual body seems like it could change radically. Consider the “slingshot” maneuver as an example. The planetary body being “slung” ends up with more momentum … but the “slinging” planet ends up with less.
AT LEAST that’s how I understood Ted’s explanation, although that was a decade ago now … but like I said, I got to the point where I could calculate all the barycentric quantities ab initio, but I could never understand how Ted connected that to the climate.
And if I don’t pass the Official Birkland Planetary Theory Knowledge Test, well … sue me. How many climate scientists do you know who have written their own spreadsheet to calculate barycentric motion? To do that you have to be able to calculate the location of every planet at a given instant. Does your knowledge of “planetary theory” allow you to do that?
w.
Steve Fitzpatrick says:
July 24, 2013 at 6:11 pm
Thanks, Steve. I disagree. At one point in my life I spent untold hours chasing cycles, using Fourier analysis, and periodicity analysis, and machine learning, and bizarre methods I invented. I was as much of a cyclomaniac as Scafetta.
I started questioning the digging when I realized it was a dry hole. There is no large, obvious, or evident effect of solar variations on climate. Even Herschel’s vaunted claim about the effect of sunspots on wheat prices doesn’t hold up with more data. There may be subtle effects, but if so they are rarely strong enough to emerge from the noise.
In fact, my inability to find any such correlations was one of the things that started me down the path to noticing that “it’s the thermostat, stupid”.
I quit digging when the implications of Fourier’s work finally caught up with me, some years too late. Fourier showed that ANY arbitrary curve can be represented as the sum of a number of sine waves.
That’s when it stopped impressing me when someone said “I can model the climate using a sum of sine waves”. So when Scafetta comes in, proudly proclaiming that he can model the historical mean surface temperature as the sum of some sine waves … so what? Fourier proved that’s true for any given curve, temperature or not.
The problem that I always found with my analyses is that it’s easy to decompose say a monthly observational dataset of length X into sine waves.
But if someone thinks those same identical sine waves will predict the succeeding X months of observational dataset, more fool them. That’s why Scafetta won’t ever take Joe Born’s test. No way his system can pass it. If cycles actually could predict the climate, all we’d need is a simple Fourier analysis.
So I quit chasing the elusive cycles, for the obvious reason. There’s an old joke that goes, what’s the difference between a rat running a maze, and a cyclomaniac running a maze?
…
A rat stops running when you remove the cheese, but a cyclomaniac just adds one more cycle to his equation and keeps going …
So I voted with the rats, and deserted the sinking ship. However, like I said, I’d love to be proven wrong on this particular question, I’d love to see someone demonstrate a strong sun-climate connection of any kind … it just hasn’t happened yet.
w.
@tjfolkerts:
LdB says: “You are completely wrong the induced error is completely chaotic it adds up every second it becomes massive very quickly.”
If that were true, then predictions of planetary motion would be impossible. Quite to the contrary, the motions are quite predictable.
NO THEY ARE NOT PREDICTABLE and if you don’t know that then you already have a problem with science.
They are semi predictable to you standing on earth looking at them in sky because you cant see the distance changes between you and it. When it appears to have the same position in the sky it will actually be at a totally different distance than last time.
Even that doesn’t hold together the planets moved over time as greek astronomers noted
read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apsidal_precession
Note:
An apsidal precession of the planet Mercury was noted by Urbain Le Verrier in the mid-19th century and accounted for by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. To first approximation, this theory adds a central force that varies as the inverse fourth power of the distance.
Tracking all the movements of the planets correctly if you were flying a spaceship is a massive undertaking we have lots of shortcuts we use it has a whole language of its own
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_mechanics
This is generally what we do
=> perturbations cause the orbital elements to change over time. Hence, we write the position element as x_0(t) and the velocity element as v_0(t), indicating that they vary with time. The technique to compute the effect of perturbations becomes one of finding expressions, either exact or approximate, for the functions x_0(t) and v_0(t). earth’s oblateness results in an unsymmetrical gravity potential.
If you took off up into space and didn’t have waypoints along the way which you have approximated correctly you would become hopelessly lost in space (ask NASA) they have to have fallbacks for that situation … in the movie Apollo 13 they showed you the problem it was just extremely lucky they could see the target … EARTH.
One other simple reason to distrust this method — the quadratic fit done originally to de-trend the data. This fit will necessarily become more and more inaccurate when looking farther back and farther ahead, such this function will go to infinity as time goes farther ahead or behind.
One obvious alternative would be to de-trend using some really long-period sinusoidal wave instead. Of course, that simply trades one 3-parameter fit for another 3-parameter fit for the initial de-trending.
(PS I’ll have some of my own data analysis coming soon.)
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 24, 2013 at 9:41 pm
Now, it’s possible you have done something comparably detailed and complex with respect to investigating and trying to understand barycentric movement, I don’t know.
This is not difficult, the respective data can be downloaded from JPL and a standard formula applied.
PS—If you think a deep understanding of Ted Landsheidt’s work is “basic stuff that anyone criticizing planetary theory should be totally aware of”, you have a huge misconception of Ted’s importance in the larger world. You could get a PhD in planetary theory and never hear his name at all.
This is simply untrue, the majority of planetary papers will have Landcsheidt referenced.
Nor has anyone, myself included, been able to take his work and make any advances on it … what has your contribution to Ted’s work been, for example?
Those that study in the field do understand, that is the point. You failed to take it to a level where the light bulb came on. Geoff Sharp has led the way in furthering Landscheidt’s work which I approve of and study. There are others now working in his footsteps because he uncovered Landscheidt’s mistake and further tuned the theory.
You have tried to understand the mechanics of the theory before understanding the basics of why he was a pioneer in this area of science. I have explained the basics, perhaps that may provide a seed to study further.
Before any other crazy people want to try and say that planetary orbits are predictable can they please download grav-sim which is freeware.
It is about as good as you are going to get for free and it has problems which it lists
=>The Grav-Sim simulators use numerical integration techniques to work out where the bodies will be a short time in the future. The calculation is based on where they are now, how fast they’re moving and how strong the pull of gravity is due to the other bodies in the system. The process is then repeated based on the new positions, speed and gravity, moving forward in time step by step.
So they sort of deal with GR/SR effects as best they can without going to the full degree.
Surely by now it has hit home that what you are trying to align to you can’t and never will.
If you go back up to my car moving a sine wave with a small random error added in example I gave Willis you will see your problem. The error is compounding and while you can see the sine wave what happens next is dependant on where the pseudo random generator is on its cycle.
Use Nicola Scaffeta approach what you will have to keep doing is keep adding in nodes to adjust so the sine wave stays on track.
Do you see what the nodes are that I am adding ….. they are attempting to track and approximate the pseudo random number generator sequence.
Assuming Skafetta is correct and this the effect of the planets is causing climate change (and that’s a big if) he will have to keep adding more and more nodes to keep the two locked
The reason why is simple he is trying to adjust for the compounding error introduced by GR/SR and any other perturbation effects.
The whole cycle is at least 86,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years that is 86 billion-trillion-trillion-trillion years from the number I have seen NASA quote.
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 24, 2013 at 10:19 pm
Geoff Sharp has led the way in furthering Landscheidt’s work which I approve of and study.
Both Geoff and Landscheidt [and their followers] are peddling ideas that violate the laws of physics, as James Shirley – also a planetary man – has already pointed out http://www.leif.org/research/Spin-Orbit-Coupling-Shirley-JPL.pdf so even if a planetary theory would eventually be understood and accepted, it will not include any of Geoff and Landscheidt’s ‘basic ideas’. The Abreu et al. paper, for example, that some imbue with relevance does not mention Landscheidt.
[snip]
REPLY: Don’t put words in my mouth not said Dr. Scafetta. I won’t tolerate it.
You are welcome to compose a reply where you do not state things I have not said or written – Anthony
tjfolkerts says:
July 24, 2013 at 10:15 pm
Not only that, but he is subtracting something of the form
A X4 + B X3 + C X2 + D X + E
from the data. Obviously, this introduces five more fitted parameters A thru E to the mix … so now we’re up to 25 fitted parameters.
w.
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 24, 2013 at 10:19 pm (Edit)
Miss the point much? I didn’t say you couldn’t just download the data, Clive. I said I calculated it myself. Some people are not capable of doing those calculations, so they just download the data from JPL … me, I wanted to really understand it.
w.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 24, 2013 at 8:13 pm
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 24, 2013 at 8:03 pm
In simple terms Theo used solar torque measurements to predict grand minima.
————————————————-
There are no measurements of such torque. I invite you to point out where in Theo’s paper http://bourabai.narod.ru/landscheidt/golden.htm he uses measured solar torque [should be planetary torques if anything]. We have in the past here at WUWT discussed those unphysical assertions [for example the postulated exchanges of Angular Momentum] several times and found them severely wanting.
I have already informed you that you are looking at the wrong paper. His earlier work picked up on the torque extrema and also some esoteric ramblings, but his later work is of better use to science.
Try:
New Little Ice Age
Instead of Global Warming?
http://bourabai.narod.ru/landscheidt/new-e.htm
Figure 11 is the key to his predictions.
Most of us are not interested in your grab bag of standard answers you pull out to quash anyone that does not follow your line. Wollf & Patrone have already provided the mechanism.
>>>> OPEN CRACKPOT RANDI CHALLENGE <<<<
Ok I have made my very own very much simple version of an astronomical cycle. I am going to even tell you a number of things about the cycle it contains a simple sinewave of amplitude 100 and the sinewave cycles every 100 steps and I will even tell you the waveform starts at (0,0).
To make the job even easier I am going to provide you simple C source code for my astronomical cycle.
Your challenge is create a robust corellation of my waveform over a mere 1 million steps.
Should be simple compared to what you are currently trying to do … so try it.
CODE:
/* The venerable pi to first 50 decimal places from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi */
#define PI (double) 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510
long x, yc, y;
int err;
yc = 0;
for (x = 0; x <= 1000000; x++){
y = sin(PI/50*x) * 100;
err = ((double)rand()/RAND_MAX * 50) – 25;
yc = yc + err;
};
That's it very simple code and here is what an output may look like
http://postimg.org/image/4kfklkyjn/
Now when you fail and you will fail I want you to ponder two things
1.) Why is such a simple sine wave cycle simply not possible to simulate you know a lot of information about the encoded waveform.
2.) How can I fix the situation so I can simulate it.
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 25, 2013 at 1:01 am
Miss the point much? I didn’t say you couldn’t just download the data, Clive. I said I calculated it myself. Some people are not capable of doing those calculations, so they just download the data from JPL … me, I wanted to really understand it.
To arrive at the solar AM, torque and radius and distance values takes a little more than downloading the data. Many have done their own thing in exercises to plot relative positions and orbital data of the planets and Sun, but few have seen the devil in the detail.
Theo inspired Carl Smith to produce his AM graph derived from similar data that you may have been working on. Carl’s graph provided the platform for the next level of understanding.
FWIW
I don’t disagree with Willis’ general sentiment about this kind of work. i.e. there is a lot of curve fitting and tunable parameters to ‘make it work’.
However, I would like to point out that these kind of solar/planetary influences may well be possibly significant and may well be capable of affecting climate. I certainly don’t think it can be dismissed as complete BS.
As an analogy, which I would presume Willis will understand very well, let us consider a boat, steering by magnetic compass, on a very long ‘straight’ track across the ocean. Ignoring the multivariables such as tides, earths mag field variations, currents and on-board magnetic influences – let’s just assume they are all fixed! – we might expect our magnetic course to remain true, Yes?
Ok – now , we know that we can only see a relatively short distance to the horizon, and very little distance down through the sea (by sight, I mean)? So, when we are sailing merrily along, we have no idea if we are passing over a massive iron nodule or other magnetic anomaly in the seabed, or indeed, if some high powered magnetic experiment is being undertaken by a suspicious government warship out of sight over the horizon, Yes? (I know it’s a fanciful notion, but is only for illustration!)
The point being that along our track, if it is affected by these unknown anomalies, which can be of varying power and effect and also, on either side of our track, we will ‘wobble’ along the track due to these influences, instead of steering a straight line.
It matters not how weak these influences might be (they may indeed be undetectable via traditional measurement instruments?) – they WILL have a tiny effect, which as any navigator knows, increases the error the longer you travel. When you add a few of these tiny effects together, their effect will combine and be greater, or may cancel each other out – thereby increasing the degree of ‘wobble’
So, we reach our destination, slightly longer in time, after traveling a ‘longer’ track – and we wonder why – we didn’t see or detect anything, and without GPS or other reference of our track, we didn’t actually ‘know’ we were wobbling at all! And that is kind of mypoint.
This is obviously only a 2D representation, but in space, a 3D representation of gravitational and solar wind, magnetic, effects, etc, will be taking place. Most of which we have neither the knowledge or skill/instruments available to ‘measure’ the effect of.
For this reason, I think it cannot be completely dismissed. We are in the realms of stuff we do not know about – and have not been around long enough to measure!
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 25, 2013 at 1:18 am
I have already informed you that you are looking at the wrong paper. His earlier work picked up on the torque extrema and also some esoteric ramblings, but his later work is of better use to science.
In the newer paper he revises the big hand down to 166 years [makes the failed predictions look a bit better], and still rambles about torque and Angular Momentum.
Wollf & Patrone have already provided the mechanism.
Which is tidal and not the Angular Momentum nonsense. Even the Wolff&Patrone ‘mechanism’ does not work in a real star as I have pointed our elsewhere.
To summarize for your erudition: Landscheidt and Sharp’s ‘basic’ idea is unphysical and rejected by W&P, Abreu et al., Shirley, and even by the good Scafetta.
Most of us are not interested
Nicely sums up your anti-science stance, wouldn’t you say?
I didn’t get a chance yet to read all of the comments before being compelled to comment. I’m not sure if Dr. Scafetta’s work is right, or wrong. But I do know that as the planets orbit, they change the barycenter of the solar system, and the Sun orbits around this point. This is not pseudoscience, you can calculate the barycenter on a JPL web app. There are times when the barycenter is external to the Sun, and it moves as the planets move (all of those cycles of the Planets astrology junk). This has to make the Sun wobble at least some, and generate tides in Solar plasma. Like I said, not sure it does what Dr. Scafetta thinks, I tried to calculate the G forces on the Sun as it follows the barycenter, not sure I did them right, but the Sun is in constant freefall around a fast moving point.
How much G-Forces does it take to make the Sun wobble? And before you say it doesn’t, we use other stars wobble to find planets orbiting around them at great distances.
@Kev-in-Uk says:
=> However, I would like to point out that these kind of solar/planetary influences may well be possibly significant and may well be capable of affecting climate. I certainly don’t think it can be dismissed as complete BS.
@MiCro says:
But I do know that as the planets orbit, they change the barycenter of the solar system, and the Sun orbits around this point. This is not pseudoscience, you can calculate the barycenter on a JPL web app.
That is correct you can calculate these things but that implies you use the right formula because there is a MASSIVE GOTCHA if you don’t.
I created a crackpot Randi challenge above where I made a simple astral cycle of a sine wave which I am happy to give all the details on its frequency, amplitude, start angle and start point.
The challenge is to fit a curve to my data … it is actually impossible !!!!!!!!
Most of these curve fit guru’s will be scratching their heads trying to work out why they can’t fit such a simple waveform and the answer is the key to there problem.
Look at my crackpot challenge and see how smart you are and why you can’t curve fit it unless I give you some key more data or fix something.
So take the challenge what is the answer .. why are all these astral cycle masters failing to get a fit for any really long length of time.
MiCro says:
July 25, 2013 at 6:30 am
This has to make the Sun wobble at least some, and generate tides in Solar plasma.
Since the sun is in free fall [as you note] it does not experience any G-forces and no tides due to the wobble. If you and I walk down the street but on opposite sides, our center of mass move down the street in the middle if the street about halfway between us. If I, all of the sudden, turn to go down a side street, the center of mass also changes it movement drastically, but you, still walking on your side of the street do not feel a thing.
I guess I should have read the last 30-40 posts first instead of the the first 30-40 posts….
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 25, 2013 at 6:49 am
Wouldn’t the Sun changing direction be caused by an acceleration being applied to it?
MiCro says:
July 25, 2013 at 6:58 am
Wouldn’t the Sun changing direction be caused by an acceleration being applied to it?
An astronaut in orbit around the Earth changes direction all the time and does not feel a thing.
What about you Leif Svalgaard can you work out why you can’t curve fit my sine wave you seem to have a grasp on things.
LdB says:
July 25, 2013 at 7:18 am
What about you Leif Svalgaard can you work out why you can’t curve fit my sine wave you seem to have a grasp on things.
I can fit a bunch of sine waves to any finite subset of your ‘data’, so don’t see why what you ask is relevant.
LdB, we re getting rather off-track. Let me just say that — what ever challenges you may have in calculating orbits — people use historical records of eclipses (back 1000’s of years) to estimate how much the earth has slowed down in it rotation. Yes, they know accurately enough where the moon was way back then to determine that the eclipses would not have been in the right place places if the rotation of the earth were constant (about 11 hours off in 1500 BC).
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/rotation.html.
Certainly the gravitational interactions of multiple bodies can lead to rather chaotic motions. Comets can and do have large changes in their orbits due to chance close encounters with planets. But planets never have chance close encounters with planet-sized objects. The orbits are settled enough that they only ever undergo very minor changes and are very predictable.
PS the Grav-Sim that you referenced says “It models a set of bodies (point masses) gravitating under Newton’s laws of motion.” — so once again we are NOT dealing with relativity here! They don’t even bother with relativity.
I disagree that the sun doesn’t feel anything just because it is freefall. For a start the universe is expanding, yes? That means that other nearby star systems weak gravitational forces on the earth should be reducing? Logically, the solar system in the past has been pulled and jostled by ‘nearer’ systems – if they are moving further away such influence (no matter how small) is getting less – so perhaps the barycentre is becoming more stable?. Also, what about moving objects such as comets – which may well be too small to influence the sun, but could influence the smaller planets and moons – and these in turn can cause planetary changes, etc.
It’s all speculation, of course, but these little things have a tendency to build up into bigger things – butterfly wings and all that!
Kev-in-Uk says:
July 25, 2013 at 7:47 am
For a start the universe is expanding, yes? That means that other nearby star systems weak gravitational forces on the earth should be reducing?
The expansion of the Universe is so weak that it cannot overcome the gravitational and electromagnetic forces keeping the solar system [or even the Galaxy together]. So the solar system [and my waistline] is not following the general expansion of the Universe.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 25, 2013 at 7:02 am
What’s the lateral acceleration of that astronaut in earth orbit, verses the Sun changing direction around the barycenter?
Freefall by itself isn’t the problem, it’s how fast the direction changes.
There are some points I would like to say.
The first point is, that I agree with Dr. Scafatta’s statements and critique here. I read here the same weak arguments regarding my work on the same matter.
The second point is, that my independent work comes to similar climate curve predictions as Dr. Scafetta. Willis Figure 1 shows “Figure 16A from Scafetta 2013. This shows his harmonic model alone (black) .. “. My summation of solar tides from Jupiter and lower moving planets shows that:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/solar_tides_1850_2100.gif
The third point is just a point which is related to our two different approaches with different quality in the result. But because neither Dr. Scafetta shows any interest of a discussion nor the authorities of WUWT, it is wasted time to write here arguments again and again and again.
That is a pity, because the mechanism contains interesting correlations between the global temperature, controlled by the solar system and some physics in the Sun. Moreover the mechanism contains a surprising logic between the springtides and the polarity of the solar heat answer, which is not general positive, and last, using the solar tide functions of the objects near the Sun, the time resolution of climate prediction can be increased to month and can be separated from the ocean frequencies:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/rss_tlt_6_2013_solart.gif
Thank you
V.
Darn it Leif, I was pretty sure that was the explanation for my expanding waistline until you said that. :p My wife keeps pushing this nonsense ‘you eat too many donuts’ theory on me…
MiCro says:
July 25, 2013 at 7:58 am
Freefall by itself isn’t the problem, it’s how fast the direction changes.
Not at all. The Sun and the astronaut are not feeling any gravitational forces [and hence no acceleration]. To put it a bit more technical: gravity is exactly balanced by the ‘centrifugal [pseudo-] force.
@tjfolkerts
=> LdB, we re getting rather off-track. Let me just say that — what ever challenges you may have in calculating orbits — people use historical records of eclipses (back 1000′s of years) to estimate how much the earth has slowed down in it rotation
I am not off track it is you idiots that can’t even see the problem … I created a simple sine waveform and you can not put a curve fit over it …. THINK HOW DID I DO IT.
As most are to stupid to see the problem I will spell it out you can make any waveform impossible to fit by any normal fitting mathematics by introducing a small non linear compounding error.
I added a small compounding error into 1 dimension the y axis, the problem these guys are facing there errors are actually in 3 dimensions bought back to a 2 dimensional which is the 3D distance between the planets which creates the gravity calc between them.
Your statement is above is correct the historical guys fixed errors in the past by observation … get it you have to adjust for the compounding error.
Here is a website that is worth you reading he has lots of funny stories about what happens if you don’t fix things up
http://www.projectpluto.com/relativi.htm
He even gives you some ways to fix Newtonian and Kepler equations up so they are sort of better.
If you bothered to actually read the Grav-Sim website on how the simulation works you will see they actually do the same sort of things as the guy above and have different methods you can choose.
The problem is so simple and yet all the pseudoscience experts on astrological cycles can’t even see what is one of the most basic science problems you can have …. compounding chaotic system error.
This is the problem that Skafetta and every other nutcase that is trying to fit curves is facing it is impossible unless you remove the compounding systematic error.
As I have already commented above why do you think the GPS system on earth requires corrections for GR/SR it will chaotically go out by 10km per day if you don’t and no they can’t curve fit and approximate that either.
GOT IT … NOT HARD … IT’S CALLED BASIC SCIENCE.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 25, 2013 at 8:07 am
Not at all. The Sun and the astronaut are not feeling any gravitational forces [and hence no acceleration]. To put it a bit more technical: gravity is exactly balanced by the ‘centrifugal [pseudo-] force.
an astronaut and satellites are under weak gravitational force, just cos he doesn’t feel it, doesn’t mean its not there. as you say, it is balanced against the rotational force – but gravity is still ‘there’ !
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 25, 2013 at 8:07 am
As I mentioned I started to try and calculate the accelerations on the Sun, didn’t get all that far.
But look at this image on the path from 1988-1994, as the Sun loops to the center, changes direction and heads back out, it feels no acceleration?
Kev-in-Uk says:
July 25, 2013 at 8:39 am
but gravity is still ‘there’
Actually not [Einsteins great insight – http://www.einstein-online.info/spotlights/equivalence_principle ], but that is not the point, which is that the astronaut [and the Sun] does not feel any gravitational force when in free fall.
MiCro says:
July 25, 2013 at 8:47 am
as the Sun loops to the center, changes direction and heads back out, it feels no acceleration?
That’s right. Just as the astronaut looping around the Earth.
@tjfolkerts
By the way tj if you really want to see the problem there is a simple way
Get Mr Skaffeta to give you the distance between his planets and the gravity forces between them on a date say 50 years from now.
Then use Grav-Sim or JPL to actually get the distance between the planets and the correct gravity forces … how much do you want to bet me they are out by truely massive amounts.
Do you see the problem now?
The whole astrological cycle graph is complete fantasy, you do realise its not actually measured they calculate it using Newtonian & Kepler maths … LOL. It would be correct at one point in time the start date because none of them bother to actually check from then on.
Even if they are right about the effect trying to curve fit a fantasy graph to a climate record of earth …. priceless.
LdB, I think we are talking about two (and a half) different problems.
1) Predicting the actual orbits of the planets, moons, etc
1b) Predicting the orbits of smaller objects like comets, satellites, etc
2) Fitting some fairly chaotic pattern (temperature) with a combination of sinusoidal waves (that might or might not be related to the orbits of planets).
The orbits of planets are fairly easy to calculate with fairly high precision with simple Newtonian mechanics, since 1) they have fairly circular orbits and 2) they never pass close to other objects of similar mass . Comets are much more problematic: the high eccentricity makes relatively a bit more important, and they can and do pass near planets that can deflect them from their previous orbit. The fact that Halley could predict the return of a comet using only a few observations and paper & pen suggests that pretty good calculations are fairly easy to do. (I note that the “test object” in the most recent link you gave is for an object called(137924) 2000 BD19 — “an asteroid with the smallest perihelion of any numbered asteroid (0.092 AU—38% of Mercury’s orbital radius). With its high eccentricity, not only does 2000 BD19 get very close to the Sun, but it also travels relatively far away from it. (wikipedia)” This sort of high-eccentricity, sun-grazing object is one where relativity would make a larger-than-average contribution.
Your “OPEN CRACKPOT RANDI CHALLENGE” actually has (almost) nothing to do with the orbits of planets. It is simply an example of why the original paper is questionable — because fitting a curve to highly variable (potentially chaotic) data is rarely easy nor is it often very illuminating as the the underlying causes.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 25, 2013 at 9:02 am
I know that the Earth follows a straight line, even if that line really bends around the Sun. But my Earth bound body tells me when you change direction on a roller coaster, in a car, on a motorcycle if you do it fast enough (ie you can do it so slow you don’t feel the force), there is a force imparted, Newton’s first law, a force is required to change direction.
While the center of the Sun is in free fall, isn’t the plasma bound to the core? which is changing direction? Are you sure the Sun has no “tides” associated to this?
I’m just trying to quell my cognitive dissonance.
Kev-in-Uk says:
July 25, 2013 at 3:14 am
I’d love to to see it established as a fact, Kev. I’ve just never seen anyone come up with a mechanism and a correlation that showed anything solid. Part of the problem, of course, is that there are dozens of astronomical bodies with a huge variety of both celestial and synodic periods and precessions. And as Scafetta has proven, you can do a Fourier analysis of the climate, and then search the heavens for corresponding cycles, and declare victory …
But unfortunately, that means nothing. Seriously. For example, to find a 9.1 year cycle, Scafetta says the derivation of the cycle is as follows. The length of the cycle is twice the length of one astronomical cycle, plus another astronomical cycle, and then divided by four … does anyone think God is actually playing that kind of dice? Really?
And if you do think that, then answer me this: what is the phase of the resulting 9.1 year cycle?
Finally, I say that Scafetta arbitrarily adjusts (fits) the amplitude, phase, and period of the data. He says no. He says he just adjusts the amplitude. However, he’s never demonstrated how that works. But let’s say that all that he is adjusting is the amplitude. I don’t believe that but lets see where that leads us.
I fear I don’t see any theoretical basis for this. He takes Jovian tides on the sun (period 11.84 years), gives them a new amplitude and adds them directly to the combination Jovian-Solar tides on the sun, which also have a new amplitude.
How does that work? You can’t arbitrarily say “this tidal force counts for more than that tidal force”.
So my objection is not to the possible solar/planetary influences. I have an open mind on them; however I’m also mindful that to date, despite lots of folks looking including myself, there’s been no strong connection established.
My objection is to Scafetta’s lack of science, as exemplified by his arbitrary parameters, coupled with his unwillingness to show his work or answer questions about it.
w.
MiCro says:
July 25, 2013 at 9:20 am
But my Earth bound body tells me when you change direction on a roller coaster, in a car, on a motorcycle if you do it fast enough (ie you can do it so slow you don’t feel the force), there is a force imparted
That is because the vehicle and you are not in free fall.
While the center of the Sun is in free fall, isn’t the plasma bound to the core? which is changing direction? Are you sure the Sun has no “tides” associated to this?
Every particle of the Sun is in free fall and they all change direction at the same time. An exception to this is tidal forces that arise from gravity being slightly different at different places. The tides are very small [millimeter sized].
Nicola Scafetta says: July 25, 2013 at 12:30 am
Anthony censored my words by stating “Nicola Scafetta says:
July 25, 2013 at 12:30 am
**********
[snip]
REPLY: Don’t put words in my mouth not said Dr. Scafetta. I won’t tolerate it.
You are welcome to compose a reply where you do not state things I have not said or written – Anthony
*********
Anthony, you are playing with the fire. Be careful.
I report again my response that you have censored.
[snip again. Dr. Scaffetta, if you were in my home, I’d show you the door. I’ll give you one last chance. As for playing with fire, you don’t want to go there. “Solar Physics” – Anthony]
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 25, 2013 at 1:46 am
Indeed, and I’ve done all of those calculations as well. You don’t seem to get it yet. Your usual objections to people who can’t follow what Ted did, that they can’t understand his concepts and they can’t do the math, don’t apply to me. I understand the concepts, and I’ve done the math, over and over.
What I never could do is understand Ted’s conceptual system of big hands and small hands and reversals of effects at certain points, and how he connected all of that that to the climate. I tried hard to understand it, and he tried hard to explain it to me … but at the end of the day, his explanations sloped off into vagueness, and his scientific claims seemed doubtful. I didn’t see then (and don’t see now) how the changing positions of the planets could apply a torque to the sun as Ted claimed (other than through tidal effects).
And the problem with tidal effects is that the planetary tides on the sun are really, really small. Gravity goes down by the square of the distance. But tidal forces go down by the cube of the distance.
Anyhow, that why I called Ted’s body of work vague and tantalizing and ultimately frustrating. You’re welcome to pursue it, and I wish you well. Me, I’ve been there and done that. I have no further interest in it. To me, it’s a dry hole, and recognizing those is one of my strengths. However, you may strike water, and I hope you do.
So unless there’s some huge breakthrough by you or someone else developing his work, I’m outta there.
Finally, we’ve been skirting the edges of the blog rules here. Discussion of Ted’s theory is heavily frowned upon here, because far too often it leads to food fights. As one of the few folk who actually corresponded with Ted on these questions, I feel like I have a neutral view on it, but it’s against blog policy nonetheless.
As a result, let me suggest that we leave it there. Email me if you find that you can accurately predict the next PDO regime change, but anything less than that, just let me sleep, thanks.
My best to you,
w.
@Leif
?? sorry, you’ve lost me there. Are you trying to say that the astronaut is NOT in a gravitational field just because his motion and the equivalence principle negates its actual presence on him personally? Does not compute to me! It’s not like he is at a Lagrange point or anything!
typo alert – Lagrange point!
[Fixed. -w.]
Kev-in-Uk says:
July 25, 2013 at 9:59 am
Are you trying to say that the astronaut is NOT in a gravitational field just because his motion and the equivalence principle negates its actual presence on him personally? Does not compute to me!
The equivalence principle states that in a reference frame that is in free fall, the laws of physics are the same as if there were no gravity at all – and hence no forces due to gravity. In other words, gravity is something that shows itself when things are not in free fall, e.g. when the falling elevator in Einstein’s thought experiment suddenly stops [hits the floor]. As long as the elevator is freely falling [as the Sun is] there are no effects of gravity – no observable gravitational forces – inside it.
The TSI Question
I wanted to comment on Figure 7b of the Scafetta work, viz:
The oddity about this is that it is a graph of the combined tidal effects of Jupiter and Saturn on the sun. But it is measured in units of total solar irradiance, that is to say “Estimated” watts per square metre … how he do dat?
Well, he doesn’t say how he do dat, does he. He refers you, as is his habit, to his previous work. Take a look there. If you can find anything in Scafetta [11, 12] that explains a conversion from gravitational force to total solar irradiance, I’m interested. I couldn’t find anything. In [12] he does say:
So perhaps the relationship is that
But somehow, the units seem a bit off, can’t put my finger on it …
These kinds of questions are what would be laid bare by Scafetta’s revealing of his data and his code. You’ll note that he claims that all is revealed … but we still don’t know how he sets the phases and amplitudes of his cycles. We still don’t know how he converts gravitational force into solar irradiance. There’s heaps of questions left unanswered … and meanwhile Scafetta is saying “If you had read my paper you would know that data and code are public.”
Well, no, Nicola, they’re not. We don’t have a single spreadsheet or computer program that you’ve used. We don’t have a single dataset that you used. We don’t know how you set the phase of the 9.1 year cycle, or the amplitudes of the rest. We don’t know how you produced the graphics.
And most of all, we don’t have the philosopher’s stone equation that miraculously transmutes the dross lead of tidal forces into the pure gold of total solar irradiance.
But heck, Nicola, if you think it’s all been revealed … then just take Joe Born’s test instead.
w.
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 25, 2013 at 10:19 am
——————-
Thanks. At my snail pace of examination I might have gotten there in the spring of next year if I was persistent. Still following this with significant interest. I’m hoping to find some hours this weekend to examine it further, so points of interest like this are most welcome in my book.
Clive Birkland says:
“Willis is not qualified to review papers concerning solar/planetary science.”
Says who? That is an assumption. What is it based upon? Unless you can give a good answer, it is a baseless assumption. But I can’t argue with what you say here:
“Science demands sufficient knowledge of the subject before peer review can be performed.”
Again, on what basis do you assert that Willis lacks sufficient knowledge of the subject?
I suggest you read A.W. Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion [available on the right sidebar] to get an understanding of what goes on behind the scenes during the climate peer review process. You will see why they call it “pal review”.
Or, you can read Prof R. Trebino’s more brief account of his peer review attempts here. Peer review isn’t anything like you describe it.
Kev-in-Uk says:
July 25, 2013 at 9:59 am
Are you trying to say that the astronaut is NOT in a gravitational field
Gravity is not a force at all, but the effect of curvature of spacetime. Now, spacetime is not something ‘absolute’ out there, but is local to every observer. For an observer in free fall her spacetime is locally flat, so no curvature, no gravity.
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 25, 2013 at 10:19 am
I wanted to comment on Figure 7b of the Scafetta work, viz:
The oddity about this is that it is a graph of the combined tidal effects of Jupiter and Saturn on the sun. But it is measured in units of total solar irradiance, that is to say “Estimated” watts per square metre
Regardless of how it was done [one could assign the proper units to the conversion factor to make the dimensions come out right], the fit is not even a reasonable approximation to the variations of TSI measured by other proxies [with the own units of conversion]. as is evident here: http://www.leif.org/research/Scafetta-Failure-Fig-7.png
Clive Birkland says:
Clive, I fear you suffer from a misconception, which is that some kid is not qualified to determine if the Emperor is clothed or naked as a jaybird …
One of the beauties of climate science is that no one can be an expert. The problem is that the climate is composed of seven inter-related systems—the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the lithosphere, the biosphere, the cryosphere, the electrosphere, and the astrosphere. Most climate scientists are specialists in one of these realms.
Now one of these, the astronomical reality, has only a one-way influence on the climate. What happens with the climate doesn’t make the sun hotter or cooler, for example. But all the rest are intimately inter-related on all spatial and temporal scales, from the molecular to the planetary, and from nanoseconds to millennia. And anyone who says they are an expert in all of that is being less than economical with the truth.
This gives me a huge advantage in the field, because I’m a generalist. I’ve spent my life extending the breadth of my knowledge across all fields, rather than extending the depth of my knowledge in a single field.
So. Does my breadth of knowledge mean that I am “qualified” to review scientific papers on solar/planetary science?
The answer is, my knowledge and experience don’t matter in the slightest, Clive.
All that matters is, are my objections germane and defensible and true? Are the flaws that I point out real flaws? Are my logical deductions actually logical? Are my assertions butressed by citations and references? Is my work transparent and replicable?
Those are the only kinds of questions worth asking, not how do I dress or do I have a PhD or am I the head of some organization or do I have prior publications. I’m not asking you to take my objections on trust, for heavens sake.
I’m asking you to think about the objections and the issues I raise, and make up your own mind.
My best to you,
w.
PS—You don’t have to know much science to point out the use of a host of arbitrary parameters in a curve fitting exercise …
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 25, 2013 at 9:33 am
Now we’re getting somewhere, so there is a tidal force, wouldn’t there be a different path for every particle as they tried to follow a moving barycenter, as well as following the Sun’s CoG as it is also moving?
Additionally wouldn’t a mm tide at the Sun surface gravity equal a much larger tide on Earth at it’s surface gravity?
Ultimately, does this effect the operation of the Sun, and if the effects are in the core, how many thousands of years does it take for those effects to reach the surface (Willis this would make fitting the climate of today to the current planetary alignments furtile).
Let me add I appreciate your patience, I can only hope that something I say brings some value to this topic.
How Many Parameters are Fitted?
In my rummaging through Scafetta, I find this:
So … Scafetta found that using four arbitrary sine waves was not enough to reconstruct the global surface temperature record. Nothing daunted, he added two more “astronomical harmonics” of 115 and 983 years. He gives no justification of that choice, other than that they are “astronomical harmonics” … Their phase and amplitude are calibrated thusly:
As I said, he’s fitting the phase, not using the phase of an actual astronomical cycle.
But let’s take him at his word. He says that he only adjusted the amplitude …
So how many fitted parameters are in his model?
Well, he starts by detrending the data using a quadratic equation of the form
A X4 + B X3 + C X2 + D X + E
So that’s five arbitrary parameters right there. Then, he says he adjusts the amplitudes of the six cycles.
Finally, he has selected the six periods. Yes, he relates them to various things, but he’s chosen them freely, and in large part through a Fourier analysis of the data to be decomposed into sine waves. He’s picked different cycle lengths in the past, and they range from 9.1 years to 983 years, so obviously his choice of periods is not constrained in any manner.
So by Scafetta’s own count, we have no less than seventeen arbitrary parameters—five from the parameters used to “detrend” the data, six from the amplitudes, and six from the free choice of periods to include.
But wait, there’s more. He’s multiplied the average of the CMIP5 climate model ensemble’s estimate of the surface temperature by an arbitrary 0.45 … add one more parameter, that makes eighteen.
Finally, there’s what I called a “hidden” parameter above, when he combines his model with the CMIP5 climate model results. His inputs are all anomalies around some zero point, as the forces involved wax and wane. The CMIP5 models, on the other hand, have a zero point at their 1960-1989 average. So his sine-wave model results need to be adjusted vertically either up or down to agree with the CMIP5 model results. That takes one more arbitrary parameter.
So, IF Scafetta is not adjusting the phase of the six sine-wave components, but has freely chosen the periods and adjusted the amplitudes, there are nineteen arbitrary parameters in his model.
If, as his text suggests, he has fit the phase as well, then there are twenty-five arbitrary parameters in his model.
Now, all you folks out there that say that there are too many tunable parameters in the global climate models, I agree with you. But at least there’s lots of physics going on as well.
Scafetta doesn’t even have that going for him. All he has is Joseph Fourier, and a bunch of carefully selected sine waves involving a couple dozen tuned parameters …
So yes, Scafetta has indeed proven that Joseph Fourier was right—given a free choice of sine-wave numbers, cycle lengths, phases, and amplitudes, you can indeed get a pretty dang good replication of the historical global surface temperature.
You’ll excuse me if I fail to be impressed …
w.
PS—I still don’t understand the inclusion of the climate models. Fourier would be puzzled as well, as he proved you could do it with sine-waves alone, no need for anything else, models or not …
Willis, I’m reminded of the way you can tune a music synthesizer to reproduce just about any rhythm you want. Tunable parameters and cycles.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesizer
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 25, 2013 at 10:31 am
“Gravity is not a force at all, but the effect of curvature of spacetime. Now, spacetime is not something ‘absolute’ out there, but is local to every observer. For an observer in free fall her spacetime is locally flat, so no curvature, no gravity.”
If I may, it would be like being inside the Vomit Comet. As the aircraft starts it’s free fall dive, everything inside falls at the same rate so to those INSIDE everything appears to be floating. If one holds a ball and lets go, it does not drop to the floor, again because it is falling at the same rate as the holder. Someone observing OUTSIDE he craft would see the craft and all inside falling from the effects of Earth’s gravity.
Willis, that quadratic fit should just be:
a x^2 + bx + c
So by Scafetta’s own count, we have no less than
seventeenfifteen arbitrary parameters. SO much better. 🙂[REPLY: True, I described a quartic fit, moving too fast, my error. Scafetta says:
I count three parameters.
Good catch, reduce the count by 2.
w.]
MiCro says:
July 25, 2013 at 11:44 am
Now we’re getting somewhere, so there is a tidal force, wouldn’t there be a different path for every particle as they tried to follow a moving barycenter, as well as following the Sun’s CoG as it is also moving?
The tides at the Sun would be caused by Jupiter [and Saturn], not by the barycenter [and it is not the sun trying to follow a moving barycenter, but the barycenter moving around corresponding to where the Sun and the planets are]. The tidal force would be given by the difference of the gravitational field caused by Jupiter [to stay Newtonian for simplicity] from one solar particle to the next. That difference is thousands of times smaller than the distance to Jupiter so is tiny indeed [raising millimeter-size tides], meaning that the difference in gravitational fields on two solar particles is billions of times smaller than the gravitational field from Jupiter upon the Sun.
Additionally wouldn’t a mm tide at the Sun surface gravity equal a much larger tide on Earth at it’s surface gravity?
The Sun’s surface gravity is 27 times larger than the Earth’s, but I do not understand your question. What matters is not the surface gravity of either. The Sun’s diameter is 100 times larger than the Earth’s so the tides on the Sun raised by Jupiter would be 100 times larger than the tides raised by Jupiter on the Earth.
Ultimately, does this effect the operation of the Sun, and if the effects are in the core, how many thousands of years does it take for those effects to reach the surface (Willis this would make fitting the climate of today to the current planetary alignments furtile).
This does not affect the Sun significantly, and by the way, the tides disappear when you go to the center. If the energy generation would be affected it would take about 200,000 years for that change to influence the surface [and the Earth].
Let me add I appreciate your patience, I can only hope that something I say brings some value to this topic.
All of this has already been explained extensively here at WUWT. Try to search some of the older postings.
In Dr. Scafetta’s paper in Figure 5 A he shows a 61 year sine modulation in respect to the global temperature minus its quadratic fit curve.
There are two real astronomic functions of A = 59.3 years and B = 63.6 years. In the years 1800 to 2100 these astronomical functions are near in phase corresponding to an average time period of 61.45 years and in phase with hadcrut4 oscillation:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/period_61year.gif
But the two functions A and B are not related to Jupiter/Saturn harmonics.
This shows that it is a better way to take the real astronomical functions instead of a stupid sine function and defined starting point.
Maybe in my next life people have understood the simple climate code and have proper climate predictions.
V.
Anthony,
why you do not want that people know what I wrote?
Willis is writing a lot of falsehoods and non-senses.
For example, above he wrote
Willis Eschenbach says: July 25, 2013 at 11:45 am
*******
Well, he starts by detrending the data using a quadratic equation of the form
A X4 + B X3 + C X2 + D X + E
*******
Anthony, let me know. How can the above function written by Willis be “quadratic”? It contains both a four and a third order power: X^4 and X^3.
And in addition I never use such 4-order function.
Who do you think to convince?
Those who will read my papers with the purpose to understand them will easily find it out.
Don’t you think?
REPLY: You can submit a comment, just don’t try to tell me what I said/wrote when your interpretation isn’t what I actually said.
My view is that you are becoming overly emotional trying to defend your work. So far I have not seen any solid defense. If you want to convince people, may I suggest you answer Willis’ questions of how you came to justify using some of the periodic numbers or “astronomical harmonics” of 115 and 983 years. Just saying they are beat of the Schwabe cycle aren’t enough. I can find harmonics in just about any signal, the question is why are they relevant.
While I would admit that it would be elegant if temperature on Earth was indeed governed by “music of the spheres” like Willis, every time I look into it I find that it is little more than a constructed illusion, much like the strained second law arguments of “the slayers”.
– Anthony
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 25, 2013 at 12:06 pm
{ Tom in Florida says:
July 25, 2013 at 12:01 pm
If one holds a ball and lets go, it does not drop to the floor, again because it is falling at the same rate as the holder. Someone observing OUTSIDE he craft would see the craft and all inside falling from the effects of Earth’s gravity. }
Leif:
Using Tom’s analogy of the “vomit comet”, people and objects inside the falling plane are in freefall, but outside the exterior shell of the aircraft, gravity affects the plane. So what is the outside structure of the sun’s Freefall environment. ie. When you say that the sun is in freefall, what is the outer limit of that effect. Is it a discrete interface, or a smoothing of the solar particle-space interface?
I can’t picture that in my mind.
Leif Svalgaard, Willis Eschenbach don’t have any understanding of thresholds and why sometimes solar changes will result in a major climate change ,while at other times they will not. Many times solar changes are not to a degree of magnitude great enough to flip the climate into another climatic regime, or even be the dominate factor in promoting which way the climate may go. They can’t grasp that simple fact, and therefore reach all bogus conclusions, when it comes to solar /climate relationships.
You will both however be proven wrong before the decade ends.
Nicola Scafetta , is more with it but is still lacking.
Nicola Scafetta does not understand thresholds (abrupt climate change),does not understand(like his counterparts) how sometimes solar changes might cause a major climatic shift while at other time hardly any.
He does not understand the beginning state of the climate will give a different end result even if the same forcings are applied to the climate.
Does not understand all the secondary effects which will come from a long prolonged solar minimum period.
He tries to fit everthing into a neat cycle, and thinks climate change is slow and gradual ,inspite of all the past evidence to the contary.
He still buys into the greenhouse gas effect (ridiculous) as a factor in the determination of the climate, when the reality is the greenhouse gas effect is a product of the climate.
The state of climate science is a mess and all of you three have made major contributions, to the mess.
Tim Clark says:
July 25, 2013 at 12:33 pm
Using Tom’s analogy of the “vomit comet”, people and objects inside the falling plane are in freefall, but outside the exterior shell of the aircraft, gravity affects the plane.
Not really: if you were flying in another plane following the first the objects in that other plane would also not fall to the floor. Imagine there were millions of such planes, objects in all of them would not fall. Connect the planes by a tube and they would make one huge structure with no gravity. Expand the tubes to fill all of space and then everywhere there would be no gravity. No gravity is the default conditions. It is only when we put obstacles in the path of the fall that it ceases to be free.
So what is the outside structure of the sun’s Freefall environment. ie. When you say that the sun is in freefall, what is the outer limit of that effect. Is it a discrete interface, or a smoothing of the solar particle-space interface?
Since nobody puts obstacles in the path of the Sun’s free fall, there are no interface or limits or smoothing or other strange things.
I can’t picture that in my mind.
consider my example with the millions of planes…
Salvatore Del Prete says:
July 25, 2013 at 12:40 pm
The state of climate science is a mess and all of you three have made major contributions, to the mess.
But now comes Salvatore to the rescue, true to his name. At least he does not suffer from cyclomania, but rather from acute alarmism. I’m not sure which is worst.
Again answers will be answered before this decade ends. I say make your arguments and stick to them , and then face up to being wrong when that time comes.
As we can see the AGW community keeps trying to come up with excuses for their failed AGW theory from the heat is in the deep oceans, to it’s the lack of Arctic Ice which is causing snowier winters /a more neg. AO.
They forecasted a much more +AO going forward. They are so full of it.
Salvatore Depl Prete says:
July 25, 2013 at 1:09 pm
face up to being wrong when that time comes.
Presuming that you will do that too and eat humble pie when the time comes [in less that seven years].
Here is an example of what I am trying to get at.
Example 1
AO index say goes from an average of +0.50 std to -0.75 std. Climate does not cool in response to a more negative AO, the AGW crowd says see no correlation told you so.
They don’t understand a threshold value has to be reached to get a major climate effect. I dare say an avg. AO index of -2.00std or greater is needed to get a major climatic effect.
Example 2- The solar output is changing ,look no climate response, therefore the sun is not a player when it comes to the climate .
No consideration being given to the duration of the solar quiet, the degree of magnitude of the quiet, the beginning state of the climate, the previous solar action prior to the quiet period, the state of ocean heat content prior to the start of the solar quiet, volcanic activity prior to the start of the solar quiet, the relative numbers of El Ninos/La Ninas, the state of the PDO/AMO prior to the solar quiet etc etc etc.
All of which will have a profound effect on how the prolonged solar minimum interacts with the climate , at least during the formative stage.
Evenually the secondary effects kick in, but only if duration and magnitude reach the critical values, which is going to be the case this decade, but has not been the case since the 1790-1830 Dalton Solar Minimum period.
Anthony’s post on the synthesizer made me remember that a triangular wave is made of the odd harmonics. So a triangular wave with a period of 63 years would have strong harmonics at
63 yrs
21 yrs (63/3)
12.6 yrs (63/5)
9 yrs (63/7)
The original wave looks rather triangular — perhaps by chance; perhaps terrestrial feedbacks lead to that; perhaps the planetary influences are coincidentally in phase. Triangular wave should have these periods for their harmonics.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 25, 2013 at 1:07 pm
Thanks.
Salvatore Depl Prete says:
July 25, 2013 at 1:23 pm
No consideration being given to the duration of the solar quiet, the degree of magnitude of the quiet, the beginning state of the climate, the previous solar action prior to the quiet period, the state of ocean heat content prior to the start of the solar quiet, volcanic activity prior to the start of the solar quiet, the relative numbers of El Ninos/La Ninas, the state of the PDO/AMO prior to the solar quiet etc etc etc.
None of the other proponents take all of that into account when the bassoon their correlations. These factors all look like excuses for why the correlations fail. Yet you [without analysis and justification] declare that these things will work out “before the end of this decade”.
Color me unimpressed.
{ Leif Svalgaard says:
July 25, 2013 at 1:07 pm }
Sorry to be difficult—but then why do Comets have tails? From interactions with planet atsmospheres? Or solar wind, or ?
Willis said:
“As I said, he’s fitting the phase, not using the phase of an actual astronomical cycle.”
It’s not an actual astronomical cycle so he can’t. The 115yrs is the beat of half a Jupiter-Saturn synodic period (9.93yrs) and 10.87yrs, a “theoretical cycle” which is *close to* half way between 9.93yrs and 11.86yrs (Jupiter orbit), apparently.
Leif , you and all the others want it to be x plus x gives you x. It just does not work that way when it comes to the climate.
This is why it is impossible for climate models to predict the future climate. x plus x wiLl not give the same x climate result.This is the downfall for you and those who agree with you. You want x plus x gives x.
Again the same forcings on the climate system can have completly different results depending on initial conditions, and or the state of the climate to begin with.The climate system is also non linear, with thresholds.
Nature is giving us the opportunity to see which theory is correct due to the prolonged solar minimum we are now in.
We have the perfect contrast which is increasing CO2 which according to AGW theory should cause the temperatures to rise, and a prolonged solar minimum which should cause the temperatures to drop.
The contrast can not be more stark. This is wonderful because the temperature response is going to determine which one is correct.
We should all know before the decade ends which one is correct and which one is wrong.
Leif best regards, this is nothing personel.
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 25, 2013 at 11:07 am
This gives me a huge advantage in the field, because I’m a generalist. I’ve spent my life extending the breadth of my knowledge across all fields, rather than extending the depth of my knowledge in a single field.
So. Does my breadth of knowledge mean that I am “qualified” to review scientific papers on solar/planetary science?
No, doing the maths behind solar system objects and having some climate knowledge does not qualify you. I gave you (and Svalgaard) a simple question that tests your knowledge of planetary theory, that question is key to understanding this realm of science. You both failed, so nothing more needs to be said, Anthony asked me to “step up” and I have.
Landscheidt got nearly everything wrong, but he opened the door to make it right, without his work we would be years behind. There is one graph that I pointed out to Leif (which he has gone quiet on) that sums up everything you need to know about Landscheidt.
http://www.landscheidt.info/images/landscheidtpred.png
If you understand the importance of this graph you can throw away all the questions and mathematical work you did in the past. All that is important is that he recognized a particular planetary configuration that happens NEAR grand minima.
Sharp went on via Carl’s graph to identify the correct planetary configuration that occurs DURING grand minima and a method of quantification of the modulation. We dont need to concern ourselves with physical drivers because the configuration hindcasts all grand minima of the past 5000 years and accurately predicts the future, as it is doing now. It is pretty simple really, a certain configuration causes the Sun to take a path that it only takes during grand minima, this is hard science that does not need “fingers or hands”.
You have no knowledge of this and also do not understand that there is no hard cycle that can be identified. Without this knowledge you are not qualified to write stupid “Cyclomania” articles on this website, all it does is make you look foolish.
Leif, I said if these solar parameters are met on a consistent basis, solar flux sub 90,solar wind sub 350 km/sec.,ap index 5.0 or lower 98+% of the time, solar irradiance off .2% or more, UV extreme short wavelengths off upwards of 50 % ,five to 10 years of sub-solar activity prior to those solar conditions mentioned, that I think the secondary effects associated with this type of solar acitivity will be enough to overcome the inherent negative feedbacks, and randomness in the earth climatic system to bring about a cooling, despite the initial state of the climate to begin with.
I don’t know if the temperature response is a slow gradual one or rapid short term then steady type of action. I don’t know what is needed to reach a threshold to make the climate go from one climate regime to another but I know from past history they are out there and this has been the rule rather then the exception.
If CO2 were the cause it would lead the temperature response not follow it , not to mention CO2 makes up only some .036% of the atmosphere, and the CO2/water vapor positive feedback has not happened. Also CO2 abrupt climatic change cannot be reconciled.
SECONDARY EFFECTS if and only if solar conditions meet those parameters which are hard to meet and have not been accomplished since the Dalton Solar Minimum on a consistent basis.
a more neg. AO result more clouds,precip. snow cover higher albedo,due to less ozoneor different distribution of ozone
more cosmic rays due to weak solar wind result more low clouds
more volcanic activitydue to cosmic rays ,shocks to earth magnetic field, result more so2 warmer stratosphere cooler surface temp.
decline in ocean heat content due to less visible sunlight
cold pdo /amo tied to length of day changes , result more La Ninas, less El Ninos
thermohaline circulation changes due to inputs or changes in fresh water into the system tied to atmospheric circulation changes
EARTH MAGNETIC FIELD
Weakening earth magnetic field – compounds all of the solar effects
This is my explanation if not this what? Yu think about it. Something has caused past climate changes and it has been quite often, so it can not be a one time trigger. Give a comprehensive alternative. Milankovitvh cycles can not account for all the short term rapid climate fluctuations.
@Nicola Scafetta, @tjfolkerts
tjflokerts says:
Your “OPEN CRACKPOT RANDI CHALLENGE” actually has (almost) nothing to do with the orbits of planets. It is simply an example of why the original paper is questionable — because fitting a curve to highly variable (potentially chaotic) data is rarely easy nor is it often very illuminating as the the underlying causes.
Quite the contrary think about what you have now correctly stated
The gravity effects of the planetary motions when viewed from any point in the system will look chaotic unless you know the correct mathematics … you have now accepted that …. and yes that is a fact.
So if climate is linked to that gravity effect with a direct correlation it should also be chaotic.
Both of those processes should not be able to have a fitted curve put on them for the same reason you couldn’t fit my crackpot challenge they contain a compounding chaotic error.
Now Nicola Scafetta claims to have fitted a curve on the climate data
So you do realize Nicola Scafetta has just FALSIFIED his own argument because he has proved planetary motion can not be linked to climate change because he should not be able to do that.
So if a fit of any curve is possible on the Climate data all of Nicola Scafetta discussion about planetary motion etc is stupid the effect has to be caused by something else or as willis is saying it’s just random chance.
Ergo Nicola Scafetta has shot his own argument down the tube.
The other point to all the astrological cycle maniacs is you are wasting your time trying to fit a curve to anything to do with planetary or gravity effects the only way it will ever work is a calculated fit by identifying and incorporating GR/SR compounding errors.
The answer to the crackpot challenge I gave is you need to know details of the small error I introduced (same reasoning as GR/SR error) and in my case I created the error by a pseudo random integer generator so you need to know about it and how it works.
If anyone wants to try some curve-fitting themselves, here is a spreadsheet that does a least-squares calculation for up to 6 sine waves and a quadratic. It comes pre-loaded with monthly HADCRUT4 data (not smoothed) and one fit that I did (quadratic plus 4 sinusoidal waves). It also forecasts for several decades into the future.
I have a non-linear optimizer that I used to get the parameters. If you don’t have such a thing, then you can play with the numbers by hand to try other fits. (You could even try something other than sine or quadratics if you really want).
I found the best fits with periods of:
69.544 51.932 21.946 9.175
I am sure others would find other fits that work well. I am also sure
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgM8XE4GABYQdEZfY0NYZWtGdHNjY1hvZjJpSUVQUlE&usp=sharing
Oh this is not good:
“Clive E. Birkland” says:
“No, doing the maths behind solar system objects and having some climate knowledge does not qualify you. I gave you (and Svalgaard) a simple question that tests your knowledge of planetary theory, that question is key to understanding this realm of science. You both failed, so nothing more needs to be said, Anthony asked me to “step up” and I have.”
I wouldn’t have asked had I known that “Clive E. Birkland” is just another fake name for Geoff Sharp who has been banned from WUWT. I determined this by cross referencing comment sourcings. Both “Clive” and Geoff’s come from the same location in Australia, months apart.
Geoff’s last message (or threat) when I banned him for over the top bad behavior was:
A bridge too far Anthony….expect a backlash.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/14/the-real-ipcc-ar5-draft-bombshell-plus-a-poll/#comment-1175573
In the meantime Geoff has snuck in also under the name “Stephen Walters” and “LBR” using at least two email aliases that I know of. In fact, he’s commented as two fake personas within six minutes of each other in this thread.
Stay classy there with that sockpuppeting, Geoff.
And to top off the sockpuppetry, “Clive” writes about Geoff Sharp here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/23/congenital-cyclomania-redux/#comment-1369792
Willis has been offered advise and teaching from Geoff Sharp in the past which he did not take up, Svalgaard is also yet to display any knowledge of the basic principles in a challenge raised by GS years ago on his website, and Anthony has no knowledge on the topic. You guys are not in a position to judge, let alone be capable of peer review.
So what qualifications does Geoff Sharp have over Willis or Leif?
From Geoff’s background page: http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/210
My background is in IT, based in Melbourne Australia, where my most recent role was Senior Consultant for a large international software house that covered a period of 20 years.
So, Geoff Sharp has no qualifications in solar physics, and apparently no published papers on the subject beyond his own website. But “Clive” suggests Dr. Svalgaard (who IS an actual solar physicist) isn’t qualified to deal with the questions, saying he’s “failed”.
I call eternal bullshit on Geoff Sharp. He’s become like the Doug Cotton of Landscheidtian theory.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
July 25, 2013 at 3:52 pm
you and all the others want it to be x plus x gives you x
Actually not, we are more inclined to want it to be 2x.
Clive E. Birkland says:
July 25, 2013 at 4:16 pm
You both failed
There are things that are just too stupid to react to. Perhaps you don’t know it but see Anthony’s comment], but this whole subject was thoroughly discussed at WUWT some years back, and solidly debunked.
I pointed out to Leif (which he has gone quiet on) that sums up everything you need to know about Landscheidt.
Here is the Figure that I showed four years ago on WUWT when we were discussing the http://www.leif.org/research/Angular%20Momentum%206000yr.png and its FFT power spectrum http://www.leif.org/research/Angular%20Momentum.png . This subject was debunked here long ago.
All that is important is that he recognized a particular planetary configuration that happens NEAR grand minima. Sharp went on via Carl’s graph to identify the correct planetary configuration that occurs DURING grand minima and a method of quantification of the modulation.
Eyeballing is even worse than curve fitting as it is subjective and cannot be replicated.
this is hard science that does not need “fingers or hands”.
This is nonsense, is what it is. Perhaps no hands are needed, just eyeballs and self-delusion.
make you look foolish
You do quite well in that department yourself.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
July 25, 2013 at 4:23 pm
Leif, I said if these solar parameters are met on a consistent basis, solar flux sub 90 … I think the secondary effects associated with this type of solar acitivity will be enough to overcome the inherent negative feedbacks, and randomness in the earth climatic system to bring about a cooling
You have shown no justification for your specific choices and no analysis showing what their effect might be.
If CO2 were the cause
You cannot use CO2 as an argument for your ideas. That leads to a cyclic argument.
This is my explanation if not this what?
No explanation at all, and you fall into the old trap: “what else can it be”.
Milankovitvh cycles can not account for all the short term rapid climate fluctuations.
A straw man as nobody is saying they do.
Anthony Watts says:
July 25, 2013 at 6:33 pm
I wouldn’t have asked had I known that “Clive E. Birkland” is just another fake name for Geoff Sharp who has been banned from WUWT. … In the meantime Geoff has snuck in also under the name “Stephen Walters” and “LBR” using at least two email aliases that I know of.
I call eternal bullshit on Geoff Sharp. He’s become like the Doug Cotton of Landscheidtian theory.
When Bernoulli posed a mathematical problem and initially nobody could solve it, he finally got a solution from an anonymous source, who was recognized by Bernoulli as Newton: “tanquam ex ungue leonem” (we recognize the lion by his claw). Perhaps we can from now on and henceforth recognize Geoff by his stink of BS.
Wow, what a farce this has turned into. GS launching a two headed attack on Willis, Anthony and Leif. I was wondering how such venom could be allowed by the mods. GS has overplayed his hand and been exposed as a tantrum throwing, spoiled brat.
@Anthony
Funny that it took you so long, your decision to ban someone who is now being accepted by main stream science is your greatest sin. A so called science site that bans people who hold different views to your own. You have no right to stifle debate that is important to scientific discovery, even if you are the owner of this site….you have a duty to science and will be remembered for your crime.
I am published at Cornell University and have several citations already. Very respected scientists will be publishing my theory this year, so I do not need qualifications because I AM RIGHT.
I look forward to the future where your name will be mud in the scientific community.
REPLY:Most anyone can publish at Cornell University Library under arxiv.org ( as you have http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1005/1005.5303.pdf) but that is not the same as passing peer review. It doesn’t even guarantee anyone will even look at it.
Details on how anyone can publish at Cornell can be seen here: http://arxiv.org/help/submit
Kenji might even have some pee reviewed papers there.
– Anthony
tjfolkerts says:
July 25, 2013 at 4:51 pm
I found the best fits with periods of: 69.544 51.932 21.946 9.175
I am sure others would find other fits that work well.
Very impressive fit, good enough to make the elephant wiggle its tail; shows the [empty] power of curve fitting
@ Anthony
So if I was published in a peer reviewed journal would that make any difference?
I suspect not as my science does not fit your agenda.
Fact is my science is now being accepted by science, as I said there are papers already accepted that will be released soon, you can throw as many tantrums as you like but the facts speak for themselves.
You, Svalgaard and Willis are not qualified to comment on planetary science, get over it.
REPLY:
Riiiiight. So feel free to submit that paper to a peer reviewed journal and let us know when it publishes. I’ll give the paper “some” respect then. You, not so much.
And with that, we eject Geoff into the Ether, until he comes back as another recycled Landscheidtian buffoon. – Anthony
Be prepared to eat your words……..
REPLY: Hey if it gets published we’ll review it here. (Oh wait, we aren’t even qualified to talk about it, never mind.) That doesn’t mean it will be right. As we know, Dr. Scaffetta’s paper passed peer review at E&E and look at all the problems it has.
Good science can stand on its own, it doesn’t need sockpuppetry to sell it. – Anthony
Anthony,
You get some strange ducks here, don’t you. 🙂
And I always thought I was weird.
Thanks once again for running this blog. I feel like I should say that after witnessing some of the bizarre abuse you deal with in order to do so.
Nicola Scafetta says:
July 25, 2013 at 12:31 pm
You are 100% correct, Nicola, my bad. I was thinking “quartic” for some reason, not quadratic. As a result, there are only three arbitrary parameters in your detrending function alone, not five. My error, and my apologies.
I wasn’t trying to “convince” anyone. I was trying to count the arbitrary parameters. I overestimated by two. Mea culpa.
Don’t know about Anthony’s take, but reading your papers with the purpose to understand them is far from enough to allow me to understand the intricacies of the process you’ve used.
In addition, it is quite possible that there is some simple error in your calculations somewhere that you don’t know about. Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened, at least to me …
Without access to the spreadsheet or computer code that you used, there is literally no way to assess your work. Even if I have honestly explained everything, what I think I have done may not be what I actually did. Without the code, there’s no way to find that out.
Like Phil Jones, you keep insisting that you don’t have to release the actual data and spreadsheets (or computer code) that you used. Mosher asked you for your data and code. Steve McIntyre made the same request. Anthony offered you the use of WUWT to spread your message if you’d reveal your data and code. I also have asked for the same thing—that you follow the simple scientific rules of transparency.
In response, you say one thing to all of us—read my papers, read my papers, read my papers. We’re not asking for your damn papers, Nicola. We’re asking for your data and your code or spreadsheets that actually do the calculations you’re talking about.
Do you think this is the 20th century? That kind of BS doesn’t fly any more. Twenty-first century scientists publish their data and their code, all of it. The code or spreadsheet producing the graphics is often the most important part of the puzzle. I publish mine, chapter and verse, data and code, for all of the scientific work that I do. Steve McIntyre does the same for his work, as do Mosher and Anthony. Are you going to man up and let people see your actual calculations and the actual data, or not?
So please don’t keep repeating “read my papers”. It’s time to put up or shut up, be a scientist or not, and so far you haven’t put up anything.
Your choice …
My preference? Truly and cordially, I invite you to join the ranks of scientists.
w.
Wow, thanks I have cyclomania burnout now.
Some good stuff on ACR Anomalous Cosmic Rays.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE 31 ICRC, ´ OD´Z 2009 1
The Unusual Behavior of Anomalous and Galactic Cosmic Ray
Intensities at 1 AU During the Present Solar Minimum
http://www.srl.utu.fi/AuxDOC/kocharov/ICRC2009/pdf/icrc0536.pdf
R. A. Leske , A. C. Cummings , C. M. S. Cohen , R. A. Mewaldt , E. C. Stone ,
M. E. Wiedenbeck , and T. T. von Rosenvinge
Abstract.
Since the early 1970’s, anomalous cosmic ray (ACR) intensities at 1 AU
at solar minimum have generally tracked the galactic cosmic ray (GCR) intensities
as measured by neutron monitors. Throughout the current A<0 cycle, however,
the ACR intensities are a factor of 34 lower than expected from
scaling neutron monitor rates; a similar discrepancy seems to have been present
during the last A<0 period in the mid-1980's. Also, although there have been no
major solar particle events for over 2 years, and sunspot numbers have been
at minimum levels for at least a year, the ACR intensities are at present a
factor of 2 lower than their maximum values during each of the last 3 solar minima,
suggesting that heliospheric conditions are not yet at minimum modulation
levels. This is probably associated with the fact that ACRs drift inward along the heliospheric
current sheet (HCS) during A<0 cycles, and the tilt of the current sheet is still
relatively high ( 23 deg) for solar minimum. However, while ACR intensities
are low, GCR intensities are at a record high, and compared with the last A<0 cycle,
we find that both ACR and GCR intensities are actually much higher
now for a given HCS tilt angle than they were in the mid-1980's.
20-125 MeV/nuc COSMIC RAY CARBON 6 NUCLEI INTENSITIES
BETWEEN 2004-2010 IN SOLAR CYCLE #23 AS MEASURED NEAR THE EARTH,
AT VOYAGER 2 AND ALSO IN THE HELIOSHEATH AT VOYAGER 1 –
MODULATION IN A TWO ZONE HELIOSPEHRE
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1202/1202.2081.pdf
W.R Webber1, A.C. Cummings2, E.C. Stone2, F.B. McDonald3, R.A. Mewaldt2,
R. Leske2, M. Wiedenbeck2, P.R. Higbie4, and B. Heikkila5
..At about 2010.0 the cosmic ray Carbon nuclei intensity at the Earth reached its maximum
54 (Mewaldt, et al., 2010). At V1 the intensity of Carbon nuclei continues to increase as of 2010.5
55 whereas at V2 it reached a maximum in early 2009, then decreased, but after 2010.5 began a
56 rapid increase. At the Earth the Carbon intensities reached levels ~25% higher than those
57 observed during the previous 11-year intensity maximum in 1997-98 (McDonald, Webber and
58 Reames, 2010; Mewaldt, et al., 2010). At V1 the cosmic ray Carbon intensities are at the highest
59 levels yet observed and at energies ~100 MeV/nuc at 2010.5 are within ~20% of the estimated
60 LIS intensities for Carbon nuclei (see Webber and Higbie, 2009; George, et al., 2009).
61 It is the purpose of this paper to compare the Carbon nuclei intensities between 20-125
62 MeV/nuc observed at the Earth and those observed at V1 and V2 during this time period, within
63 the framework of simple modulation models, with the objective of understanding better the
64 global characteristics of the solar 11-year modulation cycle, including, particularly, the
65 modulation effects beyond the HTS in the heliosheath.
We have an ACR belt in the radiation belt regime. Still stuck in those radiation belts. The Earth's magnetopause pushes against the belts. Depending on how deep into the belts the pause goes and the IMF clock on the solar wind and different energetic ionization occurs? At different atmosphereic heights?
On a roll in those radiation belts..
Links between the plasmapause and the radiation belt boundaries as observed by the instruments CIS, RAPID, and WHISPER onboard Cluster
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgra.50239/abstract
F. Darrouzet1,*, V. Pierrard1,2, S. Benck2,
G. Lointier3, J. Cabrera2, K. Borremans1,
N. Yu Ganushkina4,5, J. De Keyser1
Article first published online: 19 JUL 2013
[1] In the present work, we study the relations between the position of the plasmapause and the position of the radiation belt boundaries. The Cluster mission offers the exceptional opportunity to analyze those different regions of the inner magnetosphere with identical sensors on multiple spacecraft. We compare the positions of the radiation belt edges deduced from CIS (Cluster Ion Spectrometry) observations (electrons with energy >2 MeV) with the positions of the plasmapause derived from WHISPER (Waves of HIgh frequency and Sounder for Probing of the Electron density by Relaxation) data (electron plasma frequency). In addition, we compare those results with the edges positions determined from RAPID (Research with Adaptive Particle Imaging Detectors) observations (electrons with energy between 244.1 and 406.5keV). The period of 1 April 2007 to 31 March 2009 has been chosen for the analysis because at that time Cluster’s perigee was located at lower radial distances than during the earlier part of the mission. The perigee was then as close as 2 RE, deep inside the plasmasphere and the radiation belts. This time period corresponds to a long solar activity minimum. Differences are observed between the radiation belt boundary positions obtained from the two different instruments: The radiation belt positions are related to the energy bands. The results show that the plasmapause position is more variable than the radiation belt boundary positions, especially during small geomagnetic activity enhancements. A correspondence is observed between the plasmapause position determined by WHISPER and the outer edge of the outer radiation belt of energetic electrons (>2 MeV) observed by CIS. This result is unexpected since previous studies based on other spacecraft observations indicated a correlation between the inner edge of the outer belt and the plasmapause. However, during higher geomagnetic activity time periods, the plasmapause is located closer to the inner boundary of the outer radiation belt. Also, the thickness of the slot region is found to follow the global evolution of the geomagnetic activity.
Carla says:
July 25, 2013 at 9:33 pm
On a roll in those radiation belts..
It would be better to be a bit on Topic…
Geoff Sharp says:
July 25, 2013 at 7:32 pm
You mean that you’re nothing but a god damn sock puppet? Man, that’s depressing. I thought I was talking to a human being. Taking up an honest man’s time with that BS? Hey, if I were you I’d hide my identity too, that’s just slimy.
You claim Anthony has “No right to stifle debate”? That’s childish nonsense. The internet is a free place. If you want to make the rules, get your own blog. There, you can host the people that you think are being censored here. Heck, I’m banned from Open Mind, Tamino didn’t like my open mind I guess … and I’m banned at Tallblokes.
And that’s their right, their blogs, and they can run them as they see fit. There is no “duty to science” to allow me to comment on their blogs, or to allow you to comment here. It’s not a “crime” that Tamino has banned me, it’s just another part of life’s rich pageant.
But I’d never try to assume a false identity and sneak back in to their blogs. That’s low-down dishonesty and deception in my book, that sock puppetry. I honor their request that I not comment at their sites. It’s the decent and honorable thing to do.
So I’m sorry to say that I’m done with you, Geoff. But not because of your beliefs.
I’m done with you because you’re a sneaky deceptive man, and I don’t have any truck with people like that. There’s lots of honest forthright people to deal with, I don’t have any time for deceivers.
Please know that my main feeling is that I’m saddened by the deception. I always expect the best of both myself and of other folks. And while I’m often not at my own best and neither are the other folks, that’s just life. I expect the best of everyone, and I also expect that we’re all often not at our best.
But your sneakily adopting a false-flag disguise to go bother people who have asked you to leave, for whatever reason?
No, I don’t expect that. That’s a long way for a man to fall, that’s a sad fate.
Ah, well. Onwards …
w.
PS—I gotta say, you got some balls to put on your sock-puppet mask as Foghorn P. Leghorn or whatever the sock-puppet’s name was, and then post this:
That’s absolutely classic. You are using your sock-puppet to cite yourself as a separate authority who agreed with the sock-puppet, and who was offering me “advise and teaching” that I churlishly refused? That’s precious, Geoff, but tragic. You poor man, are you really that starved for acknowledgement? Do be careful, it’s easy to dislocate a shoulder when you’re patting yourself that strenuously on the back.
Here’s a question to consider for the future, Geoff, asked in all seriousness. You are trying to convince people that your ideas are right and worth investigating.
When those people find out that you’ve deceived them, as they have now, are they more or less likely to look favorably on your ideas?
Just askin … the trust of the people is a precious thing, Geoff. It’s hard to earn and easy to lose. Your sock puppetry is putting everything at risk. I’d reconsider … but hey, that’s just me.
The global climate code of the last 10000 years has four main causes. The first cause is the tidal force from planetary neighbour couples acting on the Sun’s power. Hereby the tidal force is proportional to the inverse square root of the tide frequency. The second cause is the impedance of the ocean oscillations as effects of the wobbling Earth axis of 433 days and its higher harmonics, known as MEI. The third cause are the drops in temperature after massive volcano out stream. The 4th cause is the slowly relaxing high solar power after the last big ice age
The first cause of the climate code is solved. The second cause still waits for a formula describing the effect using the known harmonics. The third cause is recognized and can be used to the code. The 4th cause is solved by Prof. Patzelt from the glaciers in the Alps. The greenhouse effect is not significant in that code.
It has been shown that a subtraction of a time shifted MEI from hadcrut4 data remains with the solar tides in times, when there are no volcanos involved.
However, this scope is a basis to come to a good climate prediction tool if there no volcano outbreaks decreasing the global temperature temporary:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/solar_tides_1000_2500.gif
I thank Anthony for his personal investigations with WUWT to make it possible to share ideas relating to the global climate. But because WUWT is a sceptic blog and not a blog of climate science, there are different understandings of the subject. Because it is obvious that there is a lot of personal sceptics to new insights in climate physics, but a minor interest in respectful discussions of new ideas of the climate code, I conclude that it is of no sense to give here any news about the climate code.The wall, set up to protect holy science, has changed to isolate its blind knigths from the garden of scence.
V.
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 25, 2013 at 10:22 pm
While Watts and yourself continue to mock real science with articles such as this I will fight the good fight. I make no apologies and will use whatever means necessary to expose your unscientific methods and propaganda.
It is a pity when presented with the facts that cleared up your previous lack of understanding concerning Landscheidt’s work you resort to attacking the man. A real scientist would swallow his pride and investigate the evidence, I see you do not make that grade.
REPLY: OK Geoff, sure, whatever. You’ve had your reply, now kindly get out and stay out.
This makes the third time I’ve kicked you out, and this time, I’m putting extra efforts in place that prevent you from returning as any one of your fake personas, fake emails, or fake arguments.
What a sad example of a “scientist” you set. OTOH, you’ve set a great example for irrational, dishonest, zealotry.
-Anthony Watts
Well with that brouhaha over perhaps I might venture my tuppennyworth.
I detest the use of the word cycle to describe behaviour which varies in some periodic but not precisely regular way. For instance changes in solar activity tend to be periodic but they are not sufficiently regular as to be called cyclical. Although everybody does. Whereas an electromagnetic wave is truly cyclical: at least: on the classical scale anyway.
Thus we notice the tides on earth produced by the gravitational influence of the heavenly bodies are truly cyclical. But the seasons, despite being driven by the predictable relative motion between the earth and the sun are not, sometimes spring is early sometimes late. Indeed we have a word for it: seasonal. And periodic is a good word for such changes.
Now I am not going to venture into that vipers nest of cycles, epicycles and I know what not.
But I observe two things. Except on atomic and subatomic scales true randomness does not appear to occur in nature: only in mechanical artifacts designed to produce it such as dice or the roulette wheel.
And further, for whatever reason, we humans seem to seek out patterns even where there can be none. Which is why old fashioned casinos give you a card to record the results:and their modern internet equivalents like to list hot and cold numbers and so forth. But any pattern you think you might discern means nothing.
Likewise unless you know the constraints, as you might if you were checking on some mechanical part such as the dimensions of a bolt used in an assembly, there is no statistical technique which can determine whether a series of numerical values is random or has some variation due to an underlying if unknown cause. Despite what Mr. Connelly might urge to the contrary: as he used to do. Loudly.
Much the same goes for correlating so called cycles, perfectly possible in a gearbox of course, But otherwise what does the correlation mean even if it exists? Which it might, but without the constraint such as a mechanism there is no way of knowing whether the apparent correlation has any meaning or is just random coincidence.
But then saying correlation is not evidence of causation is a statement known to all: and always ignored since the modern fashion is to invent some supposed causel link afterwards.
Supposedly scientific papers are full of this kind of thing these days: and calculated to the last decimal place too, What balderdash.
Kindest Regards
Anthony,
as I told you many times, in science people needs to be humble at least toward “nature”.
You are too easily accusing me of being “emotional” and you do not see Willis and your own emotional reactions that are making both of you unable to properly see the things.
The fact itself that, as I noted above, Willis first write
Willis Eschenbach says: July 25, 2013 at 11:45 am
*******
Well, he starts by detrending the data using a quadratic equation of the form
A X4 + B X3 + C X2 + D X + E
*******
and then, after that I pointed out that the 4th-order polynomial written by Willis is not a “quadratic equation”, Willis acknowledges
Willis Eschenbach say: July 25, 2013 at 9:00 pm
“You are 100% correct, Nicola, my bad. I was thinking “quartic” for some reason, not quadratic.”
is a clear demonstration that Willis is in a state of mental confusion and that, consequently, his criticism must be considered suspect. Willis behavior is typical of people who write emotionally without properly thinking first, and without caring about what they are writing.
Willis is simply jumping around my papers without really reading them with the intention of understanding them.
You states: “So far I have not seen any solid defense. ”
See, Anthony, my paper defends itself quite well, you just need to read it with calm.
Download it from here:
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/pdf/Scafetta_EE_2013.pdf
and read it during the weekend.
You write: ” If you want to convince people, may I suggest you answer Willis’ questions of how you came to justify using some of the periodic numbers or “astronomical harmonics” of 115 and 983 years. Just saying they are beat of the Schwabe cycle aren’t enough. I can find harmonics in just about any signal, the question is why are they relevant.”
Anthony, these things are extensively discussed in my previous publication:
Scafetta N., 2012. Multi-scale harmonic model for solar and climate cyclical variation throughout the Holocene based on Jupiter-Saturn tidal frequencies plus the 11-year solar dynamo cycle. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 80, 296-311.
Download my papers from here:
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#sub_Scientific_papers_in
You write:”While I would admit that it would be elegant if temperature on Earth was indeed governed by “music of the spheres””
Anthony, you need to understand that the fact that Earth was partially governed by the “music of the spheres” is not my own theory, but it is what people have always noted for millennia and it is a theory supported by simple theorems of mathematics: the earth’s space environment is oscillating with the planets, so it must feel these oscillations. Ptolemy understood this 19 centuries ago already.
Only during the last decades or century people become suspicious of the theory because did not know how to do the calculations.
However, with the data we have today a lot of new evidences are emerging and theories are being proposed. Let the science to develop and your will see what happens.
As Ian Wilson “friendly” told you, new papers are in press, solar physicists are getting interested, a special section on this topic is being organized on a scientific journal, I am getting invitations to talk about it at conferences and astrophysical institutes, etc.
If you do not believe in me, see the papers presented at (section 5)
Space Climate Symposium-5 in Oulu, Finland. June 15-19, 2013
http://www.spaceclimate.fi/program.html
Which demonstrates the interest in solar physicist on the topic.
So, be humble and do not think to be above science and nature.
And ask me to summarize my papers instead of asking Willis that simply makes a mess.
REPLY: It doesn’t matter that some people are interested, nor does it matter what conferences or symposiums have carried discussions of your work. What matters is replication.
Thanks for clarifying that you refuse to share anything substantive that has been requested other than what papers you have already published. Clearly you are not interested in independent replication, only adoration. That’s not science, but advocacy. Therefore there’s no point in continuing a dialog any further.
Good luck getting published in the future. – Anthony
Good luck getting published in the future. – Anthony
This may be a turning point for this blog. This will be my last visit, science does not exist here.
@ Eric Watson, I think you might be reading too much into that good luck statement. It’s just a standard signoff. But since you think that what Nicola is doing is science I’m curious as to why you don’t join the call for replicability? Right now the only place Nicola’s work can be replicated is at Nicola’s.
Is it science when only one person can do it because the tools and data aren’t made available to others?
Simple vibration can take down a bridge. Why is it so inconceivable that vibration could regulate the Sun, geomagnetic impulse and angular momentum. Lets turn to CO2 cause that complicated stuff makes my brain hurt.
Not that there is any reason anybody should care, really stating this for my own piece of mind:
1) I was originally interested in understanding Nicola’s arguments.
2) I have realized that, right or wrong, it’s a research project in and of itself to understand Dr. Scafetta’s arguments.
3) Right or wrong, my personal heuristic judgement system warns me that I am wasting valuable time and effort that I need for other endeavors, when people who’s judgement I respect all tell me that they have already looked at this and find the material wanting for reproducing Dr. Scafetta’s work.
I will probably continue to look into this on and off in my spare time, but for the record it’s dropped several priority levels from where it was. Also for the record, I am ~nobody~ with respect to climate science, I don’t know if I’m qualified or not to follow Dr. Scafettas work (and frankly don’t care), etc. etc. I don’t understand why anybody thinks these issues have any relevance, or why anyone is talking about them instead of talking about the science. All of the dramatic chest beating of credentials on this thread has thoroughly disgusted me, is why I mention this. Got no interest in that, don’t care, want no part of it, have better things to do.
Geoff Sharp says:
July 25, 2013 at 11:11 pm
Whatever means necessary? So we’re back into the region where the ends justify the means, are we, and you are justified in lying, cheating, and stealing, because you are on the side of the angels? …
Geoff, the best epitaph for folks like you was the one presented by Megan McCardle during the Peter Gleick atrocity. She said (my bold):
Can’t say it straighter than that, Geoff. You’ve now convinced me that you are willing to lie for the cause … and that’s the last thing you’ll ever convince me of.
You have given me absolutely no new facts about Landscheidt’s work. And your false claim that I “resort to attacking the man”? Hogwash.Ted Landscheidt was a long-distance friend of mine, a man I never met who generously gave me assistance and explained things to me when I was nobody and had never published a scientific paper. I did not attack him, I liked him although I couldn’t understand his work. That accusation is just more of your lies.
So … I’m glad you’re banned from here, Geoff. I rarely approve of banning anyone. But a man like you who boasts that he is willing to lie and cheat for his noble cause, and is proud of that? A man like you who sneaks back into a place where honest people have already asked him to leave because of his dishonesty?
I have no problem with banning a man like you at all. Even if you weren’t banned, Geoff, I’d say practical reasons dictate that you go and spread your lies somewhere else.
Because as Megan McArdle said, your claim that you “will use whatever means necessary” is the last thing you’ll ever convince anyone of around here … you’ve shot your bolt, no one at WUWT will ever believe another word from your lips. You’ve boasted to us that you’ll lie to our faces, we’d be crazy to trust you after that, duh.
It’s time to move on to a new batch of suckers, Geoff. Go fool someone else for a while. Don’t go away mad. Just go away.
w.
Eric Watson PHD says:
July 26, 2013 at 6:04 am
Say what? Eric, just what is it that you don’t like or don’t think is science? We’ve asked Nicola, over and over, to provide his data and code.
Nicola has flatly refused. He’s channelling Phil Jones and Michael Mann.
As an alternative, Joe Born offered him a great test, not just of his methods, but of ANY attempt to use cycles to explain the global mean surface temperature.
Nicola has flatly refused.
If you think that what Nicola is doing is science, then you should turn in your PhD on your way out the door.
Which leaves me quite curious. Science, to me, is a process wherein:
1. A scientist makes a claim, and buttresses it with all of the logic, math, data, statistics, observations, and information at their disposal.
2. He or she lays out all of their data, their code, their spreadsheets, and their results in a totally transparent manner, so other people can see, understand, and attempt to replicate what’s been done.
3. Other scientists try to tear the work to shreds. If they can do so, it goes in the trash. If they can’t tear it down, however, it is accepted as provisional scientific truth … until someone comes along who can tear it down.
To me, that slow centuries-long process is science. I make a claim, I lay it out transparently with all of my evidence and logic and math and all. Then I hand around the hammers, and see if someone can destroy it.
Since that is exactly what we do here at WUWT, science in its most immediate and transparent form, I have to say that I’m mystified by your mistaken idea that “science doesn’t exist here”.
SO … if you wanted to clarify your statement, now’s your chance. Otherwise, there’s a dumpster just outside the door, you can put your PhD in there when you leave …
w.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 23, 2013 at 10:16 am There are several other cyclomaniacs on this site pushing similar [or worse] nonsense. And I agree that this association harms the skeptical movement. Once you have been stung by the cyclomania bug, there is no way back and no salvation for you. That bug rears its stinger in every generation.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Ditto, most emphatically. You can be a scientist or a simpleton, but not both.
The bit I don’t get is how he takes two astronomical frequencies, 9.93yrs and 11.86yrs, giving a beat frequency of 61.02yrs, and then sums the 61yr beat envelope with the original frequencies. Surely that can’t be right?
TLMango says:
July 26, 2013 at 7:41 am
TLMango, it’s not inconceivable that regular cycles from the planets could regulate the sun. And many people, myself included, have looked for evidence of that regularity.
Unfortunately, no one has found it yet. For example, consider the sunspots. They have a cycle of around 11 years, as is well known. It is very tempting to relate that to the planets, e.g. the 11.862 year cycle of Jupiter around the sun. And that would seem logical, that one of the few cyclicities in the sun would be related to the gravitational force of a huge planet like Jupiter.
But when you look at the data, you find that the sunspot cycles vary from 9 years to 13.7 years, and that their average is 11.0 ± 0.25 years since March of 1755. So the apparent alignment with the orbital period of Jupiter falls apart when it is examined closely. It’s revealed to be just coincidence.
So people are not turning away from the idea of cycles. They are turning away from the lack of evidence that planets rule the sun (and indirectly the climate). If the most massive planets don’t influence the sunspot cycle, it seems unlikely they’d influence something else. If the influence of the planets is as large as is claimed, why aren’t the sunspots phase-locked to Jupiter?
The problem is that with a spheroidal object in free-fall like the sun, the only effect the planets have is through tidal action. Other than tidally, they don’t exert any torque on the sun. Other than tidally, they can’t speed up or slow down the sun’s rotation.
And while it’s tempting to say OK, that proves that the planets can indeed exert torque on the sun, the problem then is one of size. By that I mean that Jupiter creates about a 1 mm tide on the sun, and the rest of the planets make tides than are much smaller than that.
Nicola gets around this by making an astounding claim, viz:
Riiiiight … because adding mass would increase the suns luminosity, one millimeter tides on the surface of the sun will do the same??? I’ve linked to the paper above in the quote. I find it barely understandable and totally unconvincing, but of course YMMV.
However, that hasn’t stopped people (including myself) from looking. The problem is that no one has ever found any clear, convincing evidence that the planets influence the sun (beyond the obvious barycentric motion, that is to say the motion of the center of gravity of the solar system).
Nicola, for example, hypothesizes that the ≈ 1mm planetary tides on the sun, by means of an unclear “nuclear amplification” mechanism that he has proposed, are multiplied “four million times”, and that this leads to a variation in solar luminosity of 0.02 W/m2.
Two hundredths of a watt per square metre? And this is supposed to affect the earth?
People have turned away from cycles from lack of evidence, TLMango, not lack of interest.
w.
Willis, always enjoy your posts.
I just thought I’d throw something out for your consideration regarding “cycles”.
Seems to me that I’ve read somewhere that the energy we are seeing at the surface of the sun was actually generated [via fusion I assume] many thousands of years ago [the figure 800,000 comes to mind but not sure of that]
If recent solar energy was actually generated internally millenia ago, should not those who try to advance the “cycles” idea be considering what the positions of the planets would have been at that time rather than in the recent past to account for what we are seeing today?
Wondering.
I am in complete agreement with Geoff Sharp.
This decade is going to go a very long way in deciding who is correct and who is wrong
Salvatore Del Prete says:
July 26, 2013 at 12:20 pm
I am in complete agreement with Geoff Sharp.
Are you then also a lying cheat?
This decade is going to go a very long way in deciding who is correct and who is wrong
You can be right for the wrong reason. I’ll go along with the pirate hypothesis: that the lack of pirates was causing global warming and that the current upswing in Somalian piracy is causing the ‘pause’ on global warming. Prove me wrong. Perhaps I’m right about global pause but for the wrong reason.
Leif Svalgaard says: July 23, 2013 at 10:16 am
There are several other cyclomaniacs on this site pushing similar [or worse] nonsense.
Hi Doc
Cyclomania is a bit like Japanese knotweed, more severe cases eventually mutate into D&K.
vukcevic says:
July 26, 2013 at 3:16 pm
Cyclomania is a bit like Japanese knotweed, more severe cases eventually mutate into D&K.
some people are already there…
Anthony,
as I explained you already, everything necessary to replicate my results are written in my papers.
What you do not realize is that to replicate a scientific result one also need to know how to do that. That is, one needs to have the appropriate mathematical and physical background.
For example, if I say that I am using the Maximum Entropy Method to evaluate the periodogram, one needs to know what is the Maximum Entropy Method, how it works, and how to use it. People with the sufficient expertise in time series analysis know these things because written in time series analysis textbooks. And such people know where to find the required codes, which are written also in specific textbook (referenced in my papers), etc. And then you need also know how to run the code etc.
Scientific works are not written as step-by-step tutorials for beginners. And scientists are not required to write such tutorials.
Your blog is very useful as a news outlet and a source of general information for scientists as me, as well as common people. But if you try to transform it as a place where people without sufficient scientific credentials such as Willis play around as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, you only create a mess.
Professional scientists will be bored by Willis silliness, as I demonstrated above many times, and common people will not understand anything.
I suggest you to keep your blog as a news outlet and a source of general information. If you want a more in deep analysis of a paper, ask the scientist to write a short summary and respond questions people may have. Everybody will benefit from this.
REPLY: Nicola, how condescending. A week ago you were begging me to review this paper, I read it, decided pretty much what Willis did, and decided not to carry it. To my surprise, he covered what I wouldn’t. OK one last chance sir. People are asking for details that are NOT in your papers, do you get that? or are you being purposely obtuse? A simple way to solve the problem is to create an SI, rather than chant:
“read my papers”, “read my papers”, “read my papers”, “read my papers”, “read my papers”, “read my papers”, “read my papers”, “read my papers”, “read my papers”, “read my papers”, “read my papers”,
…when asked for those details.
Then when somebody actually reads and comments on your papers, you scream that they have misinterpreted them. You can’t have it both ways.
Will you supply an SI, or will you just continue to chant? Nobody is asking for a tutorial, that’s a strawman. They are asking for the elements to allow replication. Justifications for some of the magic numbers you came up with for example.
I’m guessing you will continue with the “read my paper” chanting, because to provide a useful SI, risks falsification of this apparent cyclomanian mess you call science.
If you don’t want to, that’s your right, but surely even you can predict that the next headline will be “Nicola Scafetta refuses to provide details to allow replication of his work” if you won’t provide the details to allow replication.
If you are willing, Willis has a list. If not, there is nothing more to discuss.
– Anthony
Nicola Scafetta says:
July 26, 2013 at 4:17 pm
What you do not realize is that to replicate a scientific result one also need to know how to do that. That is, one needs to have the appropriate mathematical and physical background.
I know how to. I have read your papers. I have the appropriate background. And I find your papers wanting.
Re your ‘data’. You may recall the debunking of your ‘auroral’ data here on WUWT some time ago.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 26, 2013 at 6:01 pm
Re your ‘data’. You may recall the debunking of your ‘auroral’ data here on WUWT some time ago.
Doc. S is referring to the Hungarian aurora records. If these records are actually from the Hungary’s visible events, it being a mid latitude country, one would only observe strongest of auroras.
I looked into available records, distribution and the spectrum are shown here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/HA-SSN.htm
Two pints worth noting:
– No prominent 60 year periodicity as Dr. Scafetta claims
– Aurora spectrum’s the most significant peak is at the solar magnetic cycle, not the sunspot cycle periodicity. This contradicts Dr. Svalgaard’s claim that the Earth does not react differently to the sunspot polarity (odd-even numbered cycles) as I have shown some time ago:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN-LOD.htm
Why would this matter?
It may well answer the ‘mysterious’ periodicity of the Earth’s climate natural variability
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/EarthNV.htm
All of data in the above graphs are well known to Dr. Svalgaard, I might some time write a more detailed article with the data sources links (all available on the web).
Nicola Scafetta says:
July 26, 2013 at 4:17 pm
Let me start by saying that I don’t need to know much to count the number of arbitrary fitted parameters in your model. By your own count, six in the amplitudes, three in the detrending, two in fitting the climate models. That’s eleven. Anyone using that many fitted parameters is just doing useless curve fitting.
Next, one of the ways that people judge impenetrable theorists like yourself is not by penetrating their theories. It’s by asking them to pass a simple test. Joe Born proposed one for you, a very nice one. You refused to take it. I don’t need an advanced degree or keen mathematical insight to read the writing on that wall …
I find it ironic that you talk about what is necessary “to replicate a scientific result”. The very first thing that we need to replicate your scientific result is YOUR DAMN CODE AND DATA, FOOL!! Without that, all the “appropriate mathematical and physical background” is useless. We can’t replicate what you’ve done because YOU WON’T LET US SEE HOW YOU DID IT!
Sheesh … is this really so hard to understand? But I’m a patient man, I’ll go through it once more.
Nicola, in 2013 all results are produced using the computer. I look at the papers from the 1970s and I see all kinds of hand-drawn graphs, the results of laborious hand calculations. Now we do all of that using computers.
One of the things that many of us have found in the process of auditing a bunch of climate science papers is that at times, the authors’ computer programs don’t actually do what they describe in their papers. Very occasionally this is deliberate, but much more often it’s just simple mistakes. They describe what they thought they did, but it’s not what they actually did, unknowingly or not.
In addition, the English language is not well suited to describe the hundreds of exact details of what’s been done in a typical climate paper. I can tell you I did a “Monte Carlo Analysis” to determine the statistics of the results, but that kind of an analysis depends critically on a dozen things that typically don’t make it into the papers, not even into the SI. You simply can’t describe a long series of mathematical transformations in English, that’s why we invented computer languages. And that’s what you haven’t shown us.
Next, many authors propose novel methods of your own invention. Hey, I do the same thing. But I know that no matter how well I may describe my whiz-bang method for analyzing proxy datasets, you may well not be able to understand it.
I can’t tell you how often this happens here in my work. It’s perfectly clear to me, and when I write about it, my writing seems perfectly to me … but despite that, people don’t understand it. Dangalang.
Next, there may be simple typographical errors or mental lapses in the work, putting in “Sin” for “Cos” is easy. It’s easy to mess up on the units too, done that more than once. We don’t know, and at this point can’t find out, if you’ve done something like that.
Next, words in English have a host of meanings. That’s why poetry works so well. It’s also why I can write a sentence which I know is an absolutely clear and precise definition of what I did, and you may not understand it at all.
But in computer languages and spreadsheets, there is absolutely zero ambiguity. Words have precise, strictly defined meanings, and they mean exactly that and nothing more.
So if I have the code or the spreadsheets that you used, then you don’t have to tell me how you determines the phase of each of your cycles. Each of the lines is an exact statement of what was done, with no mystery.
Only then can we see if you have hidden errors in your work. Only then can we see exactly how you fitted to half the data and tested on the other half. Only then can we see how you convert tidal force into TSI. Not handwaving explanations about 4 million times amplification by nuclear whatever, but what numbers are you using?
Finally, climate science is an oddity among physical sciences in that its subject matter isn’t physical at all. It’s mathematical, in that climate is defined as the long-term average of weather. But you can’t touch a long-term average, you can’t feel it, it has no corporality.
As a result, climate science consists almost entirely of the transformation and analysis of large datasets, subjects and objects which English is really crappy at describing. For example, I can say that “I took the average temperature of the gridcells”. But there are a variety of ways to do that. And if you don’t have access to the computer code I actually used, I might have done it a different way than you think.
For all of those reasons and more, Nicola, we need to see the actual datasets that you used, and the actual computer code and spreadsheets that operated on those datasets to produce your results and graphics. NOT THE PAPERS THAT YOU WROTE ABOUT THE THE RESULTS!! We need the data and the computer code and spreadsheets that PRODUCED those results. I asked before that you not keep saying “read my papers”. I’ve read far too many of your papers in the last while. I’m getting bored with the unending citations of your earlier works, which I then go to read, and they add no light, only heat, and in turn cite even earlier works by yourself. I’ve been through four iterations of your miracle model now, you keep adding wheels to your hexicycle or whatever it is at this point.
Never mind about your papers. Been there, read that. We need the data and the code.
This is the entry-level, bozo-simple requirement of honest climate science in the 21st century. We’ve learned not to trust people who won’t show their actual calculations.
We didn’t trust Michael Mann, he hid his data and code just as you are doing. And it turns out we didn’t trust him for very good reasons. When a man hides something, usually it’s because he has something to hide, duh …
And through all of it, we still haven’t seen your data and your code, and frankly, Scarlett, at this point I don’t give a damn. Publish it or not, Nicola. Do what you want. I’m sorry I raised the subject, and I only did it to keep you from ensnaring the unwary. At this point, even the most fervent of your adherents has noticed that you don’t follow the scientific norms of transparency and full disclosure, which means … well … it means that despite your PhD and your position at Duke University, regarding this particular subject you’re not a scientist. Scientists publish their data and their spreadsheets and their code so all of the questions are already answered, Nicola, and you don’t do that.
In any case, I’m outta here, I’ve got more interesting cycles to look at.
In closing, you do have my best wishes, Nicola. I object greatly to your hiding your data and code, but at least you are willing to come out and publicly dodge questions, and that’s more than many folks do.
w.
vukcevic says:
July 27, 2013 at 1:17 am
Two points worth noting:
– No prominent 60 year periodicity as Dr. Scafetta claims
– Aurora spectrum’s the most significant peak is at the solar magnetic cycle, not the sunspot cycle periodicity.
http://www.leif.org/research/Ungarn-Aurorae-1600-1960.png
http://www.leif.org/research/Rubenson-Auroral-Catalog.png
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 27, 2013 at 5:16 am
http://www.leif.org/research/Ungarn-Aurorae-1600-1960.png
Hmmmm
-360 years long data set
– spectral peak at 180 years
– spectral peak at 90 years
forget it doc, at least until I see your data file.
Here is extended spectrum,
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/HA-SSN.htm
No real peaks above 44 years..
vukcevic says:
July 27, 2013 at 6:17 am
No real peaks above 44 years..
http://www.leif.org/research/Ungarn-Aurorae-1600-1960.png
http://www.leif.org/research/Rubenson-Auroral-Catalog.png
http://www.leif.org/EOS/92RG01571.pdf Figures 5 and 10
What is important is the strong real peak around 11 years.
Nope. Dodgy FFT analysis
http://www.leif.org/research/Rubenson-Auroral-Catalog.png
not enough sampling points above 12 years to resolve spectrum properly
Mine graph is far more accurate see and compare
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/HA-SSN.htm
So let’s look at data file if you got one.
vukcevic says:
July 27, 2013 at 6:42 am
Dodgy FFT analysis http://www.leif.org/research/Rubenson-Auroral-Catalog.png
not enough sampling points above 12 years to resolve spectrum properly
Yearly data 1722-1877 enough to show 11-yr peak.
Mine graph is far more accurate
Obviously not.
So let’s look at data file if you got one.<
Data is plotted above spectrum [same data as you show – I think you actually got the data from me].
Check out Silverman's definitve analysis http://www.leif.org/EOS/92RG01571.pdf Figures 5 and 10. Or Feynman's http://www.leif.org/EOS/JA089iA05p03023.pdf
Perhaps you should realize that you are a bit out of your depth here. When in a hole, stop digging.
Yes 11 year is there , but it is not dominant, the dominant peak at twice the amplitude is the Hale cycle
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/HA-SSN.htm
the data file for Hungarian aurora I compiled myself from this list:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/HuAu.gif
If you have data for S. Sweden aurora I can look to see existence of both 22 and 80 year cycles.
I have looked at Silverman’s graphs, but that doesn’t mean that his FFT analysis is any more accurate than yours
The 80 years cycle was discussed by you and Henry P at some length, he was insisting on 80 and you on 105 or so.
It is correct to say that Earth captures 11 year cycle, but it differentiates in intensity of response between odd and even cycles. Aurorae are linked to geomagnetic storms.
“For reasons not fully understood, CMEs in even-numbered solar cycles (like 24) tend to hit Earth with a leading edge that is magnetized north. Such a CME should open a breach and load the magnetosphere with plasma just before the storm gets underway.” See Tony Philips-NASA
I shall read Feynman article with great interest, but he looked at six proxy data sets, so to ascertain accuracy we would need data
vukcevic says:
July 27, 2013 at 8:16 am
Yes 11 year is there , but it is not dominant
As you can see here
http://www.leif.org/research/Ungarn-Aurorae-1600-1960.png
http://www.leif.org/research/Rubenson-Auroral-Catalog.png
http://www.leif.org/EOS/92RG01571.pdf Figures 5 and 10
the 11-yr cycle is dominant below 50 years.
the data file for Hungarian aurora I compiled myself from this list
and where did you get the list from? It looks like it is cribbed from the list on my website.
If you have data for S. Sweden aurora
Of course I have data for S. Sweden. No need for you to look at it. I already showed you the power spectrum: http://www.leif.org/research/Rubenson-Auroral-Catalog.png
I have looked at Silverman’s graphs, but that doesn’t mean that his FFT analysis is any more accurate than yours
It is a good as mine. And you looking at his graphs has nothing to do with the accuracy of his analysis.
The 80 years cycle was discussed by you and Henry P at some length, he was insisting on 80 and you on 105 or so.
You are confused. The 105 years is what the sunspot cycle long period has been the past few hundred years. All of those are not real cycles, but quasi-cycles.
It is correct to say that Earth captures 11 year cycle, but it differentiates in intensity of response between odd and even cycles. Aurorae are linked to geomagnetic storms.
The 22-yr cycle in geomagnetic storm is but a small [hard to detect] second-order effect. And it has nothing to do with even-odd cycles, but to the solar polar polarities changing at solar maximum. The effect is explained here: section 9 [page 51] of http://www.leif.org/research/suipr699.pdf
“For reasons not fully understood, CMEs in even-numbered solar cycles (like 24) tend to hit Earth with a leading edge that is magnetized north. Such a CME should open a breach and load the magnetosphere with plasma just before the storm gets underway.” See Tony Philips-NASA
Dumbed down to the point of being wrong.
I shall read Feynman article with great interest, but he looked at six proxy data sets, so to ascertain accuracy we would need data
She describes in detail what data set she used. And since you get the power spectrum wrong in the first place, you will also get them wrong with her data.
Per Willis above, I’m guessing Nicola didn’t have to submit and code/spreadsheets to E&E as a requirement for publishing.
vukcevic says:
July 27, 2013 at 1:17 am
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 26, 2013 at 6:01 pm
Re your ‘data’. You may recall the debunking of your ‘auroral’ data here on WUWT some time ago.
Doc. S is referring to the Hungarian aurora records. If these records are actually from the Hungary’s visible events, it being a mid latitude country, one would only observe strongest of auroras……
—
What constitutes “strongest auroras,” may be subjective.
Spaceweather.com has a nice aurora picture collection. I have watching and saving pics of Wisconsin aurora. Wisconsin is considered a northern tier state, along with Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota etc. We are seeing plenty of aurora in these states along with some extending south into Iowa, and south from there even into Kansas. (land of Oz..) This northern tier lately doesn’t need solar flares or CME events to produce aurora at mid latitudes.
I do think that the orbital period of Jupiter and Saturn are more than coincident. But not for the reasons of solar cycle modulation. More the consequence of the magnetic solar cycle and not the modulation of it.
Thanks to Willis for his expose. (so far) Looking like a long haul..
Carla says:
July 27, 2013 at 10:19 am
What constitutes “strongest auroras,” may be subjective.
Spaceweather.com has a nice aurora picture collection. I have watching and saving pics of Wisconsin aurora. Wisconsin is considered a northern tier state, along with Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota etc. We are seeing plenty of aurora in these states along with some extending south into Iowa, and south from there even into Kansas. (land of Oz..) This northern tier lately doesn’t need solar flares or CME events to produce aurora at mid latitudes.
Neither you, Vuk, not Scafetta seem to know [which is OK, but you can learn now from this comment] that the visibility of aurorae does not follow the geographical latitude. but the magnetic latitude, which makes a big ‘dip’ over North America. Here http://www.leif.org/research/Auroral-Regions.png is a map of the regions Fritz divided the Earth into for determining auroral visibility. The curves show magnetic latitude ‘circles’. You can see that the US and Canada [look for New York and Toronto] have the same chance of seeing aurorae as [the much more northerly] Scandinavia. Hungary is on par with Sacramento, CA. So from an auroral view point the northern tier of states in the US is not ‘mid-latitudes’.
To have so many mid latitude aurora “PARTICLE” precipitation, we might have more “PARTICLES” to precipitate.
Back to the radiation belts.. and those re energized neutrals to ACR velocities.. Coming in, in the color of their elemental values. Some are light weights and haze the upper strats and some are heavier and graze the lowerer strats..
Still “Fixing a Hole,” (Beatles) were the rain gets in.
Vuks whats this about a Japanese knotweed. In Norway there is variety called “Northern Lights.” I don’t think they call it knotweed though. Better domestic than on the international trade routes..
Carla says:
July 27, 2013 at 11:09 am
To have so many mid latitude aurora “PARTICLE” precipitation, we might have more “PARTICLES” to precipitate.
But where they precipitate depends on the Earth’s magnetic field. It seems that you didn’t learn anything, after all.
Back to the radiation belts..
Perhaps some other thread would be more appropriate. Here you are off-topic.
Leif IF the solar parameters I mentioned are acheived and the temperatures drop correspondingly would you concede the solar climate connection exist?
If not what would be your alternative explaniation to explain why the temperatures did drop when very quiet solar conditions did occur ,in spite of the CO2 increases?
I know this is premature but I hope you can think about it, just in case the above proves reality.
I disagree with Leif, but I also think he is sincere in his opinions after reading all his many thoughts, that is why the questions. But don’t need to be answered, but want to pose them nevertheless.
I can usually tell.
He has much to say, let us see what prevails.
In particle precipitation, if neon and helium ACR hang higher up and Hydrogen ACR hangs lowered after precipitation, where would the Carbon and Nitrogen and Oxygen ACR end up after they precipitate?
should be sal del prete
Salvatore Dep Prete says:
July 27, 2013 at 11:19 am
Leif IF the solar parameters I mentioned are acheived and the temperatures drop correspondingly would you concede the solar climate connection exist?
No, as many other explanations are possible. Just as you will come up with similar excuses.
Carla says:
July 27, 2013 at 11:28 am
In particle precipitation, if neon and helium ACR hang higher up and Hydrogen ACR hangs lowered after precipitation, where would the Carbon and Nitrogen and Oxygen ACR end up after they precipitate?
The auroral precipitation are not Anomalous Cosmic Rays, so you are still off-topic.
What other explanations, that is what I am curious about? You would lean toward coincidence?
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 27, 2013 at 10:35 am
… the visibility of aurorae does not follow the geographical latitude. but the magnetic latitude, which makes a big ‘dip’ over North America. Here http://www.leif.org/research/Auroral-Regions.png is a map of the regions Fritz divided the Earth into for determining auroral visibility. The curves show magnetic latitude ‘circles’. You can see that the US and Canada [look for New York and Toronto] have the same chance of seeing aurorae as [the much more northerly] Scandinavia. Hungary is on par with Sacramento, CA…
—
Thanks Dr. S. that’s helpful..
And that dip has fluctuations..
Lighten up a little Dr. S., time marches on, good day.
I think a climate forecast and an explanation if they both occur has to be given serious consideration if made in advance. Notice I did not say both correct, but the fact they both happened, has to be given serious consideration.
I will be the first to concede if solar quiet prevails to the degree I say and the temperatures do not respond.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
July 27, 2013 at 11:42 am
What other explanations, that is what I am curious about? You would lean toward coincidence?
Considering that the correlations break down going back in time, there are surely other explanations. I’m leaning towards Confirmation Bias.
Carla says:
July 27, 2013 at 11:47 am
Leif Svalgaard says:
And that dip has fluctuations..
No, not on time scales of interest. There are very slow changes over thousands of years, but not over decades or a few centuries.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
July 27, 2013 at 11:51 am
I think a climate forecast and an explanation if they both occur has to be given serious consideration if made in advance. Notice I did not say both correct, but the fact they both happened, has to be given serious consideration.
Not if such associations did not happen consistently in the past.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 27, 2013 at 11:37 am
Carla says:
July 27, 2013 at 11:28 am
In particle precipitation, if neon and helium ACR hang higher up and Hydrogen ACR hangs lowered after precipitation, where would the Carbon and Nitrogen and Oxygen ACR end up after they precipitate?
The auroral precipitation are not Anomalous Cosmic Rays, so you are still off-topic.
—
ACR Anomalous Cosmic Rays are resident in the radiation belts. In particular are increased in density during periods of lower solar cycle activity such as the present. The radiation belts are analogous to a cloud around the earth that increases in density during periods of lower solar cycle activity such as the present. How does the radiation ah “cloud” around the Earth affect the ultra violet spectrum, penetration values? Are the slow speed solar winds accelerating trapped low energy ACR, back to penetration speeds, (freeing them) and they are just blowing on down the line. Those fluctuations in the outer belt may be indicating so that some of them are. Aren’t low energy ACR freed where ever there is a breach in the field where they were trapped?
Sorry, just having one of those moments.
Carla says:
July 27, 2013 at 12:23 pm
ACR Anomalous Cosmic Rays are resident in the radiation belts.
The radiation belts are not made up of ACRs. Just as the Moon is not made of green cheese.
It is a funny kinda rainbow wrapped around the planet, though.
“She’s a Rainbow,” 1966 Rolling Stones
Carla says:
July 27, 2013 at 12:38 pm
It is a funny kinda rainbow wrapped around the planet, though.
We were considering sources of precipitating particles. There are some coming from the outer radiation belt [but most come from the tail]. The inner belt[s] are not part of this process. Here is some information on ACRs and belts http://lasp.colorado.edu/~lix/paper/ICS6/ics6.pdf Some ACRs can get trapped in the magnetosphere [as any charged particles can]. As they are heavy ions they will be trapped close to the Earth, but because heavy ions are rare “the absolute flux of the ACR belt is much weaker compared with the inner belt”, so the ‘Radiation Belts’ as sources for precipitating particles do not contain ACRs. Try to stay on topic.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 27, 2013 at 9:22 am
Of course I have data for S. Sweden. No need for you to look at it. I already showed you the power spectrum: http://www.leif.org/research/Rubenson-Auroral-Catalog.png
Oh no, for a moment I thought that was Dr. Scafetta talking.
Please Sir, I want some more..data…
vukcevic says:
July 27, 2013 at 2:24 pm
Please Sir, I want some more..data…
1722 0 1723 0 1724 2 1725 0 1726 2 1727 24 1728 14 1729 18 1730 7 1731 8 1732 6 1733 9 1734 11 1735 4 1736 9 1737 12 1738 9 1739 27 1740 30 1741 9 1742 1 1743 2 1744 1 1745 2 1746 1 1747 1 1748 9 1749 12 1750 10 1751 11 1752 2 1753 7 1754 18 1755 15 1756 7 1757 13 1758 14 1759 10 1760 6 1761 11 1762 13 1763 10 1764 16 1765 8 1766 7 1767 4 1768 10 1769 11 1770 19 1771 6 1772 4 1773 15 1774 43 1775 70 1776 7 1777 32 1778 18 1779 17 1780 17 1781 47 1782 52 1783 35 1784 9 1785 17 1786 35 1787 42 1788 18 1789 27 1790 18 1791 30 1792 30 1793 19 1794 0 1795 2 1796 4 1797 2 1798 1 1799 2 1800 0 1801 2 1802 2 1803 2 1804 4 1805 10 1806 3 1807 4 1808 0 1809 0 1810 0 1811 0 1812 2 1813 1 1814 0 1815 0 1816 0 1817 5 1818 0 1819 3 1820 1 1821 2 1822 0 1823 0 1824 0 1825 1 1826 3 1827 2 1828 2 1829 2 1830 8 1831 21 1832 7 1833 4 1834 6 1835 6 1836 5 1837 14 1838 12 1839 24 1840 33 1841 21 1842 11 1843 5 1844 3 1845 3 1846 7 1847 11 1848 22 1849 38 1850 18 1851 11 1852 42 1853 20 1854 28 1855 9 1856 6 1857 3 1858 27 1859 17 1860 39 1861 25 1862 16 1863 30 1864 19 1865 22 1866 9 1867 12 1868 8 1869 18 1870 37 1871 66 1872 38 1873 53 1874 16 1875 13 1876 6 1877 10
to play with. This is what you should reproduce http://www.leif.org/research/Rubenson-Auroral-Catalog.png
vukcevic says:
July 27, 2013 at 2:24 pm
Please Sir, I want some more..data…
1722 0 1723 0 1724 2 1725 0 1726 2 1727 24 1728 14 1729 18 1730 7 1731 8 1732 6 1733 9 1734 11 1735 4 1736 9 1737 12 1738 9 1739 27 1740 30 1741 9 1742 1 1743 2 1744 1 1745 2 1746 1 1747 1 1748 9 1749 12 1750 10 1751 11 1752 2 1753 7 1754 18 1755 15 1756 7 1757 13 1758 14 1759 10 1760 6 1761 11 1762 13 1763 10 1764 16 1765 8 1766 7 1767 4 1768 10 1769 11 1770 19 1771 6 1772 4 1773 15 1774 43 1775 70 1776 7 1777 32 1778 18 1779 17 1780 17 1781 47 1782 52 1783 35 1784 9 1785 17 1786 35 1787 42 1788 18 1789 27 1790 18 1791 30 1792 30 1793 19 1794 0 1795 2 1796 4 1797 2 1798 1 1799 2 1800 0 1801 2 1802 2 1803 2 1804 4 1805 10 1806 3 1807 4 1808 0 1809 0 1810 0 1811 0 1812 2 1813 1 1814 0 1815 0 1816 0 1817 5 1818 0 1819 3 1820 1 1821 2 1822 0 1823 0 1824 0 1825 1 1826 3 1827 2 1828 2 1829 2 1830 8 1831 21 1832 7 1833 4 1834 6 1835 6 1836 5 1837 14 1838 12 1839 24 1840 33 1841 21 1842 11 1843 5 1844 3 1845 3 1846 7 1847 11 1848 22 1849 38 1850 18 1851 11 1852 42 1853 20 1854 28 1855 9 1856 6 1857 3 1858 27 1859 17 1860 39 1861 25 1862 16 1863 30 1864 19 1865 22 1866 9 1867 12 1868 8 1869 18 1870 37 1871 66 1872 38 1873 53 1874 16 1875 13 1876 6 1877 10
to play with. This is what you should reproduce http://www.leif.org/research/Rubenson-Auroral-Catalog.png
It is good to see that you concede all the other points of ‘Leif Svalgaard says: July 27, 2013 at 9:22 am’ and have grasped the explanation in section 9 of http://www.leif.org/research/suipr699.pdf so that we don’t need to re-visit that repeatedly.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 27, 2013 at 12:47 pm
..“the absolute flux of the ACR belt is much weaker compared with the inner belt”, so the ‘Radiation Belts’ as sources for precipitating particles do not contain ACRs…
—
Without being to pushy..
I’m saying they are saying this varies with solar cycle. So sometimes the little weak ACR belt gets bigger and stronger.. Like during solar minimum periods and like extended solar minimum periods.
They arrive early marking the solar slow down beginning phase. And they come in at fluxes 5 to 10 times higher than at previous minimum.
The return of the anomalous cosmic rays to 1 AU in 1992
R. A. Mewaldt1, A. C. Cummings1, J. R. Cummings1, E. C. Stone1,
B. Klecker2, D. Hovestadt2, M. Scholer2, G. M. Mason3, J. E. Mazur3,
D. C. Hamilton3, T. T. von Rosenvinge4, J. B. Blake5
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/93GL02493/abstract
Article first published online: 7 DEC 2012
New observations of low energy (∼1 to 200 MeV/nuc) cosmic rays measured by three newly launched experiments on SAMPEX during 1992 and 1993 show the strong presence of anomalous cosmic ray (ACR) nitrogen and oxygen, well before the approaching solar minimum. When compared with ACR temporal variations over the past two solar cycles we find that the 1992–1993 fluxes are ∼5 to 10 times their level at corresponding neutron monitor counting rates in 1969–1970 and 1985.
And again this time the specie of cosmic ray is Carbon. For this minimum, the intensity maximum for Carbon is 25% higher than the last..
20-125 MeV/nuc COSMIC RAY CARBON 6 NUCLEI INTENSITIES
BETWEEN 2004-2010 IN SOLAR CYCLE #23 AS MEASURED NEAR THE EARTH,
AT VOYAGER 2 AND ALSO IN THE HELIOSHEATH AT VOYAGER 1 –
MODULATION IN A TWO ZONE HELIOSPEHRE
W.R Webber1, A.C. Cummings2, E.C. Stone2, F.B. McDonald3, R.A. Mewaldt2,
R. Leske2, M. Wiedenbeck2, P.R. Higbie4, and B. Heikkila5
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1202/1202.2081.pdf
..At the Earth the Carbon intensities reached levels ~25% higher than those
observed during the previous 11-year intensity maximum in 1997-98 (McDonald, Webber and
Reames, 2010; Mewaldt, et al., 2010)…
But thanks for the time Dr. S. no need to answer.
Carla says:
July 27, 2013 at 3:21 pm
I’m saying they are saying this varies with solar cycle. So sometimes the little weak ACR belt gets bigger and stronger..
Sometimes the little weak ACR belt gets even smaller and weaker…
But, all that doesn’t matter. You continue to pollute WUWT with stuff that is not relevant to the topic at hand.
Yes, Your S. Sweden spectrum is correct, I will look into the Hungarian data again and compare two. I’m off to a hat shop, just in case.
vukcevic says:
July 27, 2013 at 2:24 pm
. . . Oh no, for a moment I thought that was Dr. Scafetta talking.
Please Sir, I want some more..data…
Please compare Aurora number vs (Solar tide index) ^4
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/solar_tides_vs_aurora.jpg
Because the solar tide index powered by 4 (cold = zero / warm ~ 1.0) is created out of real planetary couples and its strengths are the square root function of the tide period, and springtime phases are related to global warm phases, this means that solar tides control the climate on Earth.
One specific topic point is that the astronomical tide functions of real tide couples of real neighbour planets here used, can brings light into the dark WUWT climate war. The claim of Dr. Scafetta still on time periods out of FFT like sine function analysis without real ecliptic data, but claiming planetary oscillations, is still math gymnastic, but not astronomy. The claim of Willis Eschenbach about this lack of connection is OK, but it is not up to him to discredit the work of Dr. Scafetta in hole in the name of science.
Maybe there some time is an end of this stupid mind war in the next century.
V.
Hungarian records are too sparse to be used as a reference (in other words useless), it is a disappointing that S. Sweden records stop in 1880s as the ‘good’ global temperature records commence.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SS-H.htm
My hat is intact for time being.
vukcevic says:
July 28, 2013 at 4:52 am
it is a disappointing that S. Sweden records stop in 1880s
We have good data from Denmark:
1873 17 1874 21 1875 20 1876 22 1877 14 1878 9 1879 15 1880 32 1881 27 1882 51 1883 32 1884 18 1885 14 1886 22 1887 21 1888 8 1889 13 1890 20 1891 38 1892 32 1893 36 1894 37 1895 32 1896 36 1897 29 1898 35 1899 11 1900 5 1901 9 1902 4 1903 5 1904 18 1905 10 1906 23 1907 20 1908 25 1909 22 1910 30 1911 13 1912 3 1913 1 1914 9 1915 18 1916 23 1917 62 1918 38 1919 39 1920 32 1921 23 1922 4 1923 16 1924 13 1925 33 1926 23 1927 22 1928 27 1929 24 1930 24 1931 22 1932 41 1933 27 1934 15 1935 34 1936 31 1937 74 1938 71 1939 73 1940 53 1941 58 1942 34 1943 40 1944 11 1945 39 1946 47 1947 71 1948 62 1949 45 1950 47 1951 77 1952 33 1953 37 1954 28 1955 49 1956 70 1957 129 1958 132 1959 98 1960 56 1961 30 1962 11 1963 21 1964 7 1965 8
Thanks
Will append it to the Swedish records. I’ve put two spectra on the same plot
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SS-H.htm
You are basically Ok but you do miss fine detail especially important around 11yr.
Apologies to Willis for taking over his thread.
vukcevic says:
July 28, 2013 at 6:23 am
You are basically Ok but you do miss fine detail especially important around 11yr.
You are basically OK [with the Swedish data at least], except that the ‘fine detail’ is not justified [i.e. is illusionary] because of the crudeness of the data and the short span of years. Even the Hungarian data yields to the sharp knife of FFT, showing nicely the ~11-yr and ~84 yr ‘cycles’. The exact timings can vary a bit as the cycles are not steady. http://www.leif.org/research/Ungarn-Sweden-FFT.png
I’m betting Scafetta could do research on the Bible code and find the word “groovy” in it. And would lay a large bet on Vukcevic finding the phrase “magnetic auroral periodicity” in Genesis.
Leif Svalgaard says: July 28, 2013 at 7:14 am
…………………
In first-class tradition of Tycho Brahe Danish scientists of late 19th and 20th century are known and greatly respected around the globe, for their accurate and comprehensive astronomical and planetary observations, which of course includes unquestionably the most accurate aurora data available.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/DanAur.htm
I congratulate you Sir on such fine tradition and sincerely hope that you may upheld result of their superb data.
My hat is safe, I hope you got a spare one.
vukcevic says:
July 28, 2013 at 7:58 am
My hat is safe
Since you maintained that the auroral record did not contain an 11-yr peak you should have eaten that old hat already.
Dear Sir
You gota a problem!
See SSN and Danish spectra comparison
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/DanAur.htm
Are you capable on elaborating on auroras Hale cycle strength?
– by incoming solar input ? I doubt you could
– by Earth’s reaction to the polarity? You could that would be devastating for your headgear, let’s not go further in.
Denmark Aurora observations, Denmark Straits currents.
vukcevic says:
July 28, 2013 at 8:28 am
See SSN and Danish spectra comparison
The auroral cycle does not match the solar cycle exactly because the high-speed streams on the declining cycle adds some aurorae. This distorts the cycle a bit and creates harmonics at 2X and 3X the basic cycle, i.e.the 22 and 33-yr peaks are just harmonics and do not have any further physical meaning. So, now eat your hat. And perhaps throttle back the tread hi-jacking a bit.
Leif Svalgaard says: July 28, 2013 at 8:35 am
……………..
Big thank you for the data and see you again elsewhere.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 28, 2013 at 8:35 am
This distorts the cycle a bit and creates harmonics
I put that a bit too sloppily. The distortions [from a pure sine wave] create harmonics with periods at 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, … of the fundamental. If the basic cycle (11-yr) is modulated by a longer cycle (100-yr), we get a splitting of the 11-yr peaks [and its harmonics], and the harmonics of the 100-yr wave at 1/2, 1/4, 1/4, … of the long wave. Here is a synthetic example http://www.leif.org/research/Harmonics-FFT.png
So the periods longer than 11 yrs are harmonics of the 100-yr wave, not ‘Hale cycle’ peaks. If you inspect your spectrum for the SSN [which does show even-odd effects], you will see that the Hale-cycle signature is much diminished.
This concludes the hi-jacking.
MiCro and Dr. Svalgaard, The Sun is not in “free fall”. In general relativity only “test particles” can be in free fall, because they lack extent. Extended bodies such as the Sun, planets and the Gravity Probe A satellite are not in free fall.
Martin Lewitt says:
July 29, 2013 at 5:55 am
Martin, to be honest it’s beyond my skills. But I do know that the CoG of the Solar System does move, and since we find exoplanets by measuring the wobble of their parent star, our parent star should have a wobble. Does this effect the output of the Sun, and is it delayed maybe thousands of years, I don’t know. But I do find it intriguing.
Martin Lewitt says:
July 29, 2013 at 5:55 am
The Sun is not in “free fall”. In general relativity only “test particles” can be in free fall, because they lack extent.
While in theory true, the Sun etc are in the weak gravitational regime and the complications from being an extended body are negligible. There are only measurable effects for strong gravitational fields such as supermassive black holes or binary neutron stars. But in the solar system it is not necessary to include complications caused by bodies being extended. The highly precise JPL ephemeris [ http://iau-comm4.jpl.nasa.gov/XSChap8.pdf ] uses the Einstein-Infeld-Huffman equations of motion that describe the dynamics of point-like masses, including General Relativity effects. They are valid in the limit where velocities of the bodies are small compared to the speed of light and where the gravitational fields affecting them are correspondingly weak. These conditions are fully satisfied in the Sun and the solar system. So your attempt to suggest that solar activity is an effect of General Relativity is way off the mark.
There are measurable extended body effects in our gravity probe satellites, much less more extended rotating bodies with quadrature like the Sun. For purposes of ephemeris calculations treating extended bodies as point masses works. But we don’t need strong enough effects to explain the solar cycle, but the much smaller effects to explain variation in the solar dynamo perturbed by the the orbital period of Jupiter as the primary coupled oscillators with lesser contributions from the other planets. Dynamical processes might concentrate the cumulative effects of the torques in mass currents in the outer 2% of the mass of the sun.
Martin Lewitt says:
July 29, 2013 at 10:26 am
But we don’t need strong enough effects to explain the solar cycle, but the much smaller effects to explain variation in the solar dynamo perturbed by the orbital period of Jupiter
The variations of the cycle are as large as the cycle itself, so not minor effects.
Dynamical processes might concentrate the cumulative effects of the torques in mass currents in the outer 2% of the mass of the sun.
Even if that were so, what is important is the variation of those effects that, as you put it, “might” exist. Jupiter is far away and the variations of its distance to the Sun are small. But I would be interested in your precise calculation of those effects, rather than just hand waving.
Martin Lewitt says:
July 29, 2013 at 10:26 am
Dynamical processes might concentrate the cumulative effects of the torques in mass currents in the outer 2% of the mass of the sun.
A clever trick, giving the appearance of calculation of these ‘dynamical promises’, but the outer 2% is just the mass of the convection zone [determined by other means] which has nothing to do with General Relativity.
Leif
http://www.leif.org/research/Comment-Planetary-Peaks.pdf
Syn. SSN = ABS(COS(π/10.81*t)*COS(π/1024*t))
What’s the mechanism? How is the Sun multiplying two cosines?
lgl says:
July 29, 2013 at 12:51 pm
How is the Sun multiplying two cosines?
There may be a long-term modulation of solar activity [or at least of cosmic rays]. My formula creates a simple model of that variation to show how harmonics arise. Any formula that has that long-term variation [even a long string of numbers laboriously entered by hand] would do.
Leif
Or maybe your formula is just numerological pseudoscience?
lgl says:
July 29, 2013 at 2:39 pm
Or maybe your formula is just numerological pseudoscience?
Just like all the rest. That is the whole point. Good that you have seen the light.
Dr. Svalgaard says: “Jupiter is far away and the variations of its distance to the Sun are small.”
It isn’t the variation in Jupiter’s distance that would drive any coupling but the orbital motion of Jupiter itself, it’s mass current.
Here are the relative contributions (M/d^3) of the planets with mercury being unity:
mercury 1.0000
venus 2.2706
earth 1.0541
mars 0.0319
jupiter 2.3771
saturn 0.1140
uranus 0.0022
neptune 0.0007
And you say: “The variations of the cycle are as large as the cycle itself, so not minor effects.”
The cycle persists even through grand minima, how can you say the variation is as large as the cycle. The cycle itself is the oscillator, and would couple to Jupiter rather than Venus because the orbital period is close to the cycle period. The forces required to couple oscillators are small compared to those that are the oscillations. Consider the classic example of the synchronization of two pendulum clocks separated but standing against the same wall. The forces acting between them are orders of magnitude less than those acting within. The coupling between the Jupiter mass current and mass heterogeneity and mass currents of the solar dynamo, would be imperfect and have occasional phase collapses, whose timing might be perturbed by the other planets. Even if the coupling is through mass currents rather than magnetic, it mean that any state perturbation or buildup mechanism can’t ultimately be magnetic.
Effects as small as 4m/s concentrated in much less that 2% of the solar mass seem characteristic of the solar variation. Wilson, et al, calculated transfers of this scale.
Does a Spin–Orbit Coupling Between the Sun and the Jovian Planets Govern the Solar Cycle?
I. R. G. WilsonA,C, B. D. CarterB, and I. A. Waite
http://www.publish.csiro.au/?act=view_file&file_id=AS06018.pdf
Given suggestive correlations and longer term cycles that seem to require long term memory or build-ups of state to a collapse, lets just say, I’m skeptical, that the correlations can dismissed with an erroneous appeal to Newtonian “free fall”. The mechanism may be in the dynamics of the dynamo mass currents and magnetic fields, you may be one of the ones to elucidate them when the understanding is ripe.
Martin Lewitt says:
July 29, 2013 at 5:39 pm
Here are the relative contributions (M/d^3) of the planets with mercury being unity
These are just the tidal effect computed form Newtonian theory.
The cycle persists even through grand minima, how can you say the variation is as large as the cycle.
Mea culpa, I should have said ‘as larger or larger’
The cycle itself is the oscillator
No, it is not.
Effects as small as 4m/s concentrated in much less that 2% of the solar mass seem characteristic of the solar variation. Wilson, et al, calculated transfers of this scale.
Typical velocities in the convection zone are a hundred times larger.
I’m skeptical, that the correlations can dismissed with an erroneous appeal to Newtonian “free fall”
I’m interested in a calculation of the deviation from free fall. Gravity Probe B was in free fall according to http://einstein.stanford.edu/RESOURCES/presentations/tech_reviews/bencze-AAS06_DF_control.pdf
Dr. Svalgaard, The quadrature effects of GR are also proportional to the mass and inverse to the cube of the distance. Rotation, internal heterogeneity and mass currents as well as tidal bulges are quadrature in GR.
By stating that the cycle was the oscillator, I intended that to mean the solar dynamo with its characteristic cycle or period was the oscillator. Whatever, within that dynamo that resists synchronization with the orbit of Jupiter and insists on its own characteristic period is where the state will build up and eventually collapse.
“Free fall” in the sense used in the Gravity Probe B paper, only means free of non-gravitational accelerations, so they could measure the non-free-fall extended body GR effects. They were using actual forces (helium thrusters) to isolate their gyroscopes from the accelerations due to atmospheric drag.
Martin Lewitt says:
July 29, 2013 at 6:27 pm
Rotation, internal heterogeneity and mass currents as well as tidal bulges are quadrature in GR.
What is lacking is your numerical estimate of the magnitude of those effects.
By stating that the cycle was the oscillator, I intended that to mean the solar dynamo with its characteristic cycle or period was the oscillator.
That is precisely what is wrong. A simplistic view is that the solar dynamo oscillates by converting toroidal field to poloidal field and then back to toroidal field, and so on. But that is too simple: the creation of toroidal field is a rather deterministic process, the creation of poloidal fields is very random and contingent. The two ‘halves’ of the solar cycle are governed by different physics and it is not correct to label the cycle an oscillator
“Free fall” in the sense used in the Gravity Probe B paper, only means free of non-gravitational accelerations, so they could measure the non-free-fall extended body GR effects.
Educate me on what they found. The frame-dragging is not an extended body GR effect, neither is the geodetic effect. What else did they find?
Dr. Svalgaard, Both frame dragging and and geodetic effects are extended body effects. Rotation and angular momentum both require extended bodies at any level above a subatomic particle. And note that Newton’s third law of motion still applies, the gravity probe is exerting and equal and opposite effect, just as the GR effects on Mercury’s orbit, Mercury has exerted corresponding effects on the Sun.
Martin Lewitt says:
July 29, 2013 at 7:51 pm
And note that Newton’s third law of motion still applies, the gravity probe is exerting and equal and opposite effect, just as the GR effects on Mercury’s orbit, Mercury has exerted corresponding effects on the Sun.
The effect of the Sun on Mecury is extremely small, on Venus, Earth, Jupiter etc much smaller yet, hence their effects on the Sun are negligible. But when Einstein calculated the effect on Mercury, he did not treat Mercury as an extended body [these complications were discovered later].
Dr. Svalgaard, I wasn’t considering treating Mercury as an extended body at all which would certainly be minimal vis’a’vis the Sun, but rather what the Sun was doing to Mercury’s orbit, Mercury’s monopole mass current was having correspondingly the opposing effect on the Sun. I also concede that if you are thinking in terms of the GR increment alone the effects are probably too minimal, but I was thinking in terms of all the inverse distance cubed coupling, including the tidal and quadrature effects which are in Newtonian gravitation as well. Extended bodies are not in free fall, and torques and transfers of angular momentum occur at levels which cannot be dismissed out of hand.
Martin Lewitt says:
July 29, 2013 at 10:37 pm
terms of all the inverse distance cubed coupling, including the tidal and quadrature effects which are in Newtonian gravitation as well … torques and transfers of angular momentum occur at levels which cannot be dismissed out of hand
They are dismissed because their effects are minuscule, starting with the Newtonian ones. The GR ones are apt to be much smaller. To argue otherwise would require a calculation of the deviations from the free fall approximation and you have not provided any, and I have not located any in the literature either. But I’m always willing to be educated on this so please provide some quantitative education.
Wow, for once a WattsUpWithThat post I agree with! Who’d have thought!