Guest essay by David Archibald
There is now consensus that the Sun has now entered a quiet period. The first paper from the solar physics community predicting the current quiet period was Schatten and Tobiska’s 2003 paper “Solar Activity Heading for a Maunder Minimum?”. To date, Solar Cycle 24 has shown similar maximum SSN amplitudes to that of Solar Cycle 5, the first half of the Dalton Minimum:
Figure 1: Solar Cycle 24 relative to the Dalton Minimum
But what comes beyond that? Predicting the amplitude of Solar Cycle 24 was big business in the solar physics community with a total of 75 forecasts. There is only one forecast of the amplitude of Solar Cycle 25 to date. That forecast is Livingstone and Penn’s prediction of a maximum amplitude of seven. The first forecast, by Libby and Pandolfi, of the current quiet period is now over 40 years old. The fact that Libby and Pandolfi’s prediction got the detail of temperature changes to date right gives great credibility to it. Written in 1979, they forecast a warming trend for the rest of the 20th century followed by a cold snap that might well last throughout the first half of the 21st century. Specifically, Dr Libby is quoted by the Los Angeles Times as saying,
“we see a warming trend (by about a quarter of 1 degree Fahrenheit) globally to around the year 2000. And then it will get really cold – if we believe our projections. This has to be tested.” How cold? “Easily one or two degrees,” she replied, “and maybe even three or four degrees.”
The Libby and Pandolfi forecast was based on isotope ratios in tree rings and dates from a time before the corruption of tree ring science.
One commercial consequence of lower solar activity is that satellites will last longer in their orbits. Another is that agricultural production in the mid-latitudes will be affected. One of the most productive agricultural regions on the planet is the Corn Belt of the United States. Modern corn hybrids are tuned around maximizing the yield from the growing conditions experienced in the Corn Belt over the last 30 years with Growing Degree Days (GDD) to maturity ranging from 2200 to 2700. GDD is calculated from the day of planting by adding the maximum and minimum daily temperature in Fahrenheit, dividing by two and then subtracting 50 to produce the result. If the overnight minimum is less than 50°F, 50°F is used. The maximum is capped at 86°F as corn plants don’t grow any faster above that temperature. Daily temperature records for the Corn Belt start about 1900. The following graph shows the accumulation of GDDs for the periods 1901 – 1910 and 2001 – 2010 for Whitestown just northeast of Indianapolis in the southeast end of the Corn Belt:
Figure 2: Cumulative GDD for Whitestown, Indiana 1901 – 1910 and 2001 – 2010
The graph assumes a common planting date of 27th April. The blue lines are the years 1901 – 1910 and the red lines are the years 2001 – 2010. They all stop on the date of first frost. Most of the growing seasons last decade had plenty of heat to get to maturity with up to 1,000 GDD in excess of the requirement at 2,500 GDD. A century before, the margin of safety was far less. Normal first frost for Whitestown is 10th October. A century ago the earliest frost was five weeks before that on 3rd September, 1908. Similarly, in the latter period the earliest date to get to 2,500 GDD was 15th August. In the earlier period the last date to get to 2,500 GDD was almost six weeks later at 28th September.
Farmers can adjust the type of crop they grow to suit their climatic expectations. Yield is directly proportional to GDD though as shown by the following graphic of corn and soybeans:
Figure 3: Yield relative to GDD (CHU) for Corn and Soybeans Source: Andy Bootsma, 2002: Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Eastern Canada
If a farmer plants a 2,200 GDD corn crop in the expectation of a cool or short season and the season turns out to have been capable of growing a 2,500 GDD, then he has foregone about 12% of the value of the later maturing variety. If he plants a 2,500 GDD variety and the season falls short though, most of the value of the crop will be lost. Wheat and barley require about 1,600 GDD and 1,400 GDD respectively. The highest wheat yield in Indiana in 2012 was 74 bushels/acre whereas the highest corn yield was 159 bushels/acre. Another factor in predicting grain output is the ability to switch to winter wheat in which a crop is planted in early September, germinates and then lies dormant under the snow blanket until the following spring.
A study in the 1980s of the effect of lower temperatures on Canadian wheat production found that a 1°C decrease would reduce the frost-free period by 15 days and that a 2°C decrease would not allow the crop to ripen before the first frost. Canadian wheat farmers have assured me though that they could switch to winter wheat and have a higher yield. In Manitoba, for example, the yield might be 71 bushels per acre for winter wheat compared to 51 bushels per acre for spring wheat. Growing winter wheat is riskier than spring wheat in that a hard frost before the first snow could kill the crop.
A further complication in trying to determine what the coming decline in temperature will do to grain production is that the area of the Corn Belt approximates to the region that was scraped flat by the Laurentide ice sheet. After the Wisconsin Glacier receded, the glaciated soils of the Midwest that are primarily north of Interstate 70 were covered with several feet of wind-blown loess deposits that came from the Great Plains that lie east of the Rockies. In Northern Illinois for example, in an area north of I-80, six to eight feet of loess deposits overlie glacier till. These soils are all primarily silt loam, silty clay loam, clay loam and clay. The water holding capacity of these soils are about 2 inches per foot. The counties in the Corn Belt with the highest productivity have deep fertile soils. Most of these soils were covered with prairie grass that over time raised the organic matter levels to between 2% and 5%. The resulting biological activity that developed in these soils made them very productive. These counties are also watered by natural rainfall that results from the Gulf of Mexico Pump. As the weather fronts move from west to east across the Rockies, we have the Great Plains that are mostly arid, but by the time the fronts reach eastern Nebraska, the moisture from the Gulf of Mexico is sucked north by the counter-clockwise flow of air that rotates around the low pressure fronts and drops the rain on the Midwest when it hits the cooler air from the north. Therefore the Corn Belt has the optimum combination of soil type, temperature and moisture. As growing conditions shift south, the soil types won’t be as good.
Friis-Christianson and Lassen theory enables us to predict temperature for a solar cycle if we know the length of the solar cycle preceding it. Thus Solheim et al have been able to predict that the average global temperature over Solar Cycle 24 will be 0.9°C lower than it was over Solar Cycle 23. Polar amplification also plays a part such that Svalbard, for example, in winter will experience a 6°C decline in temperature. Work on temperature records in the northeast United States suggest that the temperature decline in prospect for the Corn Belt is 2.0°C for Solar Cycle 24.
We can cross-check this expectation against modelled historic Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) data. Lean et al produced a reconstruction of TSI back to 1610. That is shown in Figure 4 following. Also shown is Livingstone and Penn’s prediction for Solar Cycle 25 amplitude converted to TSI by scaling against the Maunder Minimum. Shaviv in 2008 found empirically that a 1 watt/m2 change in TSI was associated with (as opposed to cause directly) in a 0.6°C change in global average temperature. A fall in solar activity to levels reached in the Dalton Minimum, as per Lean’s data, would result in a decline of global temperature of 1.2°C, a little more than what Solheim’s group is projecting. Solar Cycle 4, the cycle preceding the Dalton Minimum, was 13.6 years long, about a year longer than Solar Cycle 23. Libby and Pandolfi’s prediction of a temperature decline of up to 4°F translates to 2.2°C. Through TSI, this would require a fall of 3.7 watts/m2 which is greater than the range in Lean’s modelled data for the period since 1610. This may mean that Libby and Pandolfi are correct and Lean’s model needs adjusting.
Figure 4: Projecting the decline in Total Solar Irradiance
Working through the effect on GDDs, a return to TSI conditions of the Dalton Minimum can be expected to reduce US corn production by perhaps 20% to 25%. This equates to the increase in corn production over the last ten years from mandated ethanol. US grain and soybean production of about 500 million tonnes per annum is sufficient to feed 1.2 billion vegetarians. The amine profile of wheat can be approximated by a diet of 70% corn and 30% soybeans, otherwise those things are fed to animals at about a 25% protein conversion efficiency. Corn and soybeans would be the diet of involuntary vegetarianism. The rest of the world does not have the luxury of US agriculture’s latent productivity.
Figure 5: US Corn and Wheat Prices 1784 to 2013
Figure 5 shows the effect of the low temperatures of the Dalton Minimum on corn and wheat prices in the United States. The absolute peak was associated with the eruption of Mt Tambora. Also evident is the period of high and volatile prices associated with the cold temperatures of the mid-19th century.
Figure 6: Major wheat exporting countries
A return to the climatic conditions of the Dalton Minimum is likely to take Russia, Kazakhstan and the European Union out of the export market. The other countries will have some reduction in wheat available for export. Colder is also drier and thus a number of major grain producers such as India and China, currently largely self-sufficient, will experience shortfalls from their requirements.
Figure 6: Imports and exports of grain by continent
Figure 6 above shows net exports of grain by continent with the Arab countries as a separate region. Those countries are the biggest grain importing block on the planet. Soybeans are not included in this graphic. China has become the major soybean importer at 60 million tonnes per annum. In terms of protein content, that equates to about 180 million tonnes of wheat per annum. The Chinese convert those soybeans to animal protein in the form of pig meat.
Countries in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region have been in the news recently. Further detail on their import dependency is shown in Figure 6 following.
Figure 6: MENA region domestic and imported grain by country
In Figure 6, the population size of each country is shown by the size of the bar. The blue component of the bar shows how much of each country’s grain requirement is grown domestically and the red component denotes the imported share. Countries are shown from west to east as per the map. A proportion of the Egyptian population already suffers from malnutrition. A current wheat prices, it costs about $1 per day to keep someone fed in terms of bulk grain. The oil exporting countries in the graphic can afford to feed their populations, with some countries feeding others as well. Saudi Arabia has been keeping Yemen above water and more recently took on Egypt too.
Figure 7: An animal model of population growth and collapse
All the countries of the MENA region have seen their populations grow to well in excess of their inherent carrying capacity. A combination of deteriorating climate and ongoing world population growth can be reasonably expected to cause a spike in grain prices to levels last seen in the 19th century. It is also possible that sufficient grain may not be available at any price in some regions. Populations models from the animal kingdom provide some guidance as to how events might unfold. A good example is the snowshoe hare and lynx of North America. The snowshoe hare population collapses to less than 10% of its peak on a roughly ten year cycle, followed by the lynx. Taking the example of Egypt, the current population is twice the level that can be supported by its grain production. If the food supply to that country falls below the minimum required to maintain public order, then the distribution system for diesel and fertiliser will break down and domestic grain production would also be affected.
The starving populations of Egyptian cities will fan out into the countryside and consume whatever they can chew which will include the seed grain. That will ensure that domestic grain production will collapse. The population of Egypt might fall to 10% of its carrying capacity which would be 5% of its current level. Any starvation in the MENA region is likely to trigger panic buying by other governments in the region and beyond with consequent effects on established trade patterns.
UPDATE:
The Excel spreadsheet for the Whitestown data used in this essay is here Whitestown-all-years (.xlsx file)
Hmm interesting thoughts. Probably not going to be able to stop something like this, time to start thinking about adaptation. Food production is well understood science, we should start thinking on what to do given a starvation scenario. Harmless to game it even if it never hits the worst considered scenario.
Yes David, peak food and peak oil. Somehow we will manage to increase yields if the temps turn downward. Look at the yield growth over the last sixty years. Just like oil; we will keep finding new techniques that make your static models fail.
A scary forecast. In one or two years from now we will know it.
Not sure how useful historic yields are considering progress in seeds, hybrids and fertilisation, including CO2 fertilisation. In a way that’s like comparing 1910’s automobiles to 2010’s in an attempt to look at mpgs.
“The starving populations of Egyptian cities will fan out into the countryside and consume whatever they can chew which will include OTHER HUMANES.” Just as Europeans ate their own babies during the LIA.
Thanks, David, interesting post. What is the source of your data for Figure 2?
w.
A lot of mixing of wheat/corn with ‘grain’. Would have liked to read a bit more about projected rice production, as well as crops like potato.
I’m gonna have to protest this one:
You repeat the error of the climate alarmists, who claim that a rise of a few degrees will be catastrophic. While a fall of a few degrees is definitely something to be concerned with, I don’t think that farmers are as foolish as you seem to assume they are. If the growing season gets shorter, they will switch to shorter season crops, including short-season corn.
Best regards,
w.
As for previous posts by the same author, I must object about certain assumptions and levels of extensions of the quiet sun/cool temperatures/food crises in this post. Fundamentally, I see in the line of reasoning an expression of the Unique Solution Syndrome, the same syndrome that characterizes the CAGW camp: that one, over-riding parameter determines the outcome of a complex system.
The sun, through sunspots, doesn’t do everything. All correlated patterns do not have a common cause.
The unitary, directed causative correlations between grain price and temperature and lynx-snowshoe populations is shockingly naive. For grain crops only, there are mechanical changes, fertilization issues, movement (because of the first two issues) into marginal lands, transport abilities, government subsidies, international use of food as political tools, changes in diet and relative proportions of population in developed countries to take into account. We are well beyond simple supply and demand conditions. As for the hare-lynx comparison, it is not the numbers that count as it is the proportionality and reflects predator-prey interactions with different birth rates: trapping, poisoning and loss of habitat are considered unimportant?
In case the reader thinks I am anti-sun as an influence on our climate, the answer is “no”. I do not disagree with the (repeated) prediction of either a quiet sun or GCR/cloudiness relationship or even a cooling trend coming up. I disagree with what appears to be an over-stretching of evidence, a Gorism, perhaps, for a Catastrophic Global Cooling (CGC) which is not strongly supported.
The sun changes prior to the drop to the Dalton and certainly the Maunder Minimum. We had entered into the LIA out of the MWP long before the Maunder began, and we had risen from the Maunder before the Dalton began – why are we looking to, in a step-function, collapse the pre-minima changes in one fell swoop today? It is all CGC drama.
We have to first go from here to get there. The assumption here is that the LIA was purely the result of the sunspot minima (through extension); a return to the minima will bring the LIA back, with a plunge to temperatures of those times, i.e. up to 3C. What I see is a drop of a degree, perhaps less, which is to bring us back to the 1950s, not even the 1920s.
I understand that on a practical level we also have to respect the relationship between global temperatures and regional ones (not that the CAGW likes to do this). Grain-belt temperature changes are admittedly greater than those of the globe, so a comparison of one to the other must note this: a big one in the center of North America is about 1/2 of that of the world. Each region must be considered separately.
Certainly grain yields will be affected, as elevated heat will, over only a few days, reduce crop yields by 20% (personal experience along the Saskatchewan-American border in the mid-80s). This is a threshold problem, of course: where the crops are sitting on the border of viability they will be most affected by a shift of minimal temperatures.
The threat posed by CGC here is more like that of another Tambora in 1815. The temperatures dropped suddenly in April when the eruption occurred, causing a global drop of 0.4 – 0.7C – but that is a global average for a year in which both the pre-eruption and post-eruption more normal temperatures have been ignored. The specific temperature drop due to the Tambora eruption was much more than that and occurred during the specifically important growing season. It was not the global average drop that caused the problem as the regional drop during the growing season.
The prediction of a quiet sun is one thing. The prediction of a catastrophic cooling event, of a return to a Dalton, let alone a Maunder climatic condition and its impact on the food generating capabilities of the planet are, in my opinion, over-hyped and forgetful that the climatic conditions of the pre-Maunder and pre-Dalton period (and the SSN, too) are not the same as those of our recent years.
Interesting – appears that should global temperatures continue to cool, United States/North America become the world’s breadbasket, far better than becoming or being the world’s policeman.
There are two related themes here that are both worthy of deeper individual treatment.
One is the impact of cooler temperatures on global agricultural productivity, the other the vulnerability of entire regions to any disruption in agricultural trade.
Imho, the author should have kept his focus on just the first of these. A bit of extra research on the capabilities of breeders to develop more cold tolerant grains would have added perspective.
Nice post and well done.
The corresponding rebuttal is the ability in other regions to grow corn due to the drop in summer time temps and the resulting increase in soil moisture.. The black belt regions of the Southern states come to mind – roughly a triangle from Dallas to Memphis to Atlanta and then back to Dallas.
We will adapt.
I question the “colder is dryer statement”. I can’t be true everywhere and at all times. It’s just -2C. How can you prove there won’t be more rain on subtropical marginal land?
Farmers in the US are limited primarily by the market price for crops, given relative international currency valuation. We’ve been converting or reverting agricultural land for generations now, which should tell you that the market drives farming in the US, not hunger. So, short of a new Younger Dryas era, the scare tactics are premature.
It’s beginning to look like the Arctic minimum might have arrived three days ago.
Ice extent has risen slightly over the last two days, according to NSIDC data.
If so, the minimum would be about a week earlier than normal, and will make it the highest extent since 2006. (Although other sources suggest 2009 could run it close.)
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/09/08/arctic-ice-extentis-this-the-minimum/
Regardless of how cold winters are, or might be, the ruling class has demonstrated how to treat the masses. In recent winters, how many died of cold in Great Britain as a result of energy policy; basically allowing people to perish so others can stay warm. The US with a surplus of energy and food can withstand brutal winters providing the infrastructure remains capable. When colder winters destroy/reduce crops in China, Canada, Europe, etc, the cost of food and energy will become a factor in who eats and who does not. Do we rely on the likes and decisions of the ruling class? We can argue many merits or lack of to this subject, but keep in mind that the policy making fools are in charge. The examples of hurricane victims and governing agencies should be an eye opener for those in NE USA. A big freeze with big snow and no groceries at the supermarket? Who you gonna call? Farming adapting to cooler climate is not an answer.
The story is in it’s beginning phase, and we will have to see first how quiet the prolonged solar minimum is, and how long it last.
If these solar paramenters become established I expect a substancial cooling.
They are:
solat flux sub 90 sustained, sub 72 more severe.
solar wind sub 350km/sec. sustained, sub 300 km/sec. more severe.
ap index 5.0 or lower 98+% of the time.
cosimc ray count north of 6600 counts per minute sustained.
solar irradiance off .015% or more sustained.
EUV(extreme ultraviolet light) off upwards of 50% sustained.
The above following many years of sub-solar activity in general which we have had since late 2005.
The era of solar data from 1844-present has NO data to show how the climatic system of the earth may act to a prolonged solar minimum and the associated effects with this type of solar action, because their has not been one such occurrence post the Dalton Minimum.
What we have had instead is a more or less active regular 11 year sunspot cycle with lulls and peaks,. This type of solar action in my opinion is not going to make for solar/climate correlations, because the the degree of magnitude change and duration of time of solar actvity was not extreme enough to over come random earthly climatic changes ,such as ENSO,VOLCANIC ACTIVITY ,PDO/AMO etc. and also not strong enough to overcome the inherent negative feedbacks in the earth climatic system.
Anotherwords for the solar /climate correlation to become established to some degree a critical threshold level of solar activity deviation must occur from what it has done prior.
It looks like this deviation in solar actiivty has commenced in year 2005 and should continue for some time which will allow us to see if indeed a solar /climatic relationship does or does not exist.
I think it does when one looks at the two most recent prolonged solar minimum periods, those being the Maunder Minimum and the Dalton Minimum and the response of the climate at those times.
As I write this the solar flux value is sub 100, and this closer to typical solar mimimum readings despite the fact we are currently in the maximum of solar cycle 24.
Oh dear he starts off by using the “C” word. That starts to raise the red flag in my world.
Very good post, thank you. A great deal of consumable foodstuffs are wasted or underutilized every year –
– Per-capita consumer waste is estimated to be 95 to 115 kilograms per year for Europe and North America, but only 6 to 11 kilograms per year in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (Gustavsson et al. 2011).
– Food waste is a huge problem globally, but the underlying reasons differ between regions.
– Food waste in high-income countries is dominated by consumer waste.
– Developing countries have high losses at the post-harvest and processing stages due to spoilage. Factors leading to spoilage include lack of modern transport and storage infrastructure, as well as financial, managerial and technical limitations in difficult climatic conditions (Venkat 2011; Gustavsson et al. 2011).
– The total avoidable food waste in the United States is 55.41 million tonnes per year for 2009, which amounts to 28.7 percent of total annual production by weight (Venkat 2011).
– Using 2011 retail prices, the avoidable food waste in the United States (for the year 2009) has a total retail value of 197.7 billion USD. Consumer waste alone amounts to 124.1 billion USD, or nearly 63 percent of the total retail value of wasted food (Venkat 2011).
====
I think we’ll be able to handle domestic food supply changes due to a slightly cooler world. However, rampant overpopulation in countries such as Egypt will carry a stiff price-tag.
Hmmm. All very interesting. Has anyone begun to study what the UK has been doing, and whether the past 5 years of long, cold winters with relatively short cool summers have had any affect upon local food production? If so, what has it been?
Energy supplies have apparently been affected there by the cold conditions as well as by government policies.
The starving populations of Egyptian cities will fan out into the countryside and consume whatever they can chew which will include the seed grain.
More likely, they’ll try to get to Europe.
good grief….using this logic…you can’t grow tomatoes in Alaska because the season is too short
…well duh, of course you can…..you use a faster breed
David, south Florida used to produce 90% of our winter produce…..our growing season down here is shorter than in the midwest..who do we do it?……using plants that grow faster!
The models David Archibald lays out are potential scientific predictions of the events foreseen by John:
Revelation 6:5-6 NIV
The first forecast, by Libby and Pandolfi… is now over 40 years old. […] Written in 1979…
Counting on my fingers and toes I get just 34 years from 1979 to the present.
Check out the sun at its supposed maximum ……… it says its NORMAL ,,,, wonder what it will look like at its minimum ?????????
As per typical, they don,t like bad projections. Only like projections that match their religion.
Australian projections for the flux are 100 or less for the next 8 years!
They don,t want to open their eyes and see that the Sun has an effect on us. It has only been 100 years, that the world has not experienced wide range famines! Watch the fall in Dr. Spencer,s global temperatures!
Just as well CO2 is rising since it increases yields and reduces water requirements of many crop plants!
Interesting article, but I’m as skeptical of catastrophic global cooling as I am of catastrophic global warming.
Although likely just somewhat compensated for by other measures (like less diversion of corn to ethanol), an industrialized country like the U.S. will never starve since even greenhouse agriculture with plastic sheeting is possible if needed (not quite as expensive as it sounds since yield per unit area is much increased over outdoors, increasingly done with tomato production for instance). Of course, parts of the third world are already food insecure, so…
TSI isn’t quite the right metric to focus on, though. The bigger difference between the Maunder Minimum and now is that, unlike how cosmic ray flux varies by just several percent in a ~ 11 year solar cycle, it was tens of percent different back then. (Whether external forcings will return to quite that level in coming decades is uncertain but appears very much a possibility so far). Such is part of the picture and explanation of climate history over recent centuries and decades, shown with the derivative of sea level rise and much else in http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif
(Of course, I’ve posted such before, but very few people actually ever *read* in terms of clicking and looking; that even the anti-sun posters here never have dared engage it is illustrative, though, of how much it contains inconvenient facts they don’t like people’s attention drawn to).
I’m puzzled by Fig 4 which is the historic TSI. I can accept that the older numbers could be less reliable, than recent numbers. (we used 1353 when I was in school).
This is the first plot of TSI that I have seen that wasn’t extremely noisy, and also the first I have seen, that apparently monitored TSI over the annual earth orbital radius changes.
OK, I’l accept that some noise filtering process was used to remove the typical noise I have seen in satellite graphs.
Now here is the mystery; please explain.
The amplitude of the annual cycling for the modern warm period, is clearly significantly higher than the amplitude during the earlier period in the 1850 to 1910 period. yet the value differs by about 1 w/m^2; less than 0.1%
So how it do dat ??
This is not peak food. This is the effect of temp. on food production, which can have serious effect depending on how cold it gets.
george e. smith says:
September 8, 2013 at 12:29 pm
“The amplitude of the annual cycling for the modern warm period, is clearly significantly higher than the amplitude during the earlier period in the 1850 to 1910 period. yet the value differs by about 1 w/m^2; less than 0.1%”
Figure 4 in this article incorrectly states 1 W/m^2 per 0.6 degrees Celsius while strangely attributing that particular number to Dr. Nir Shaviv. Actually, Dr. Shaviv estimates around 1.7 W/m^2 change is required per 0.6 degrees Celsius. He observes how cosmic ray modulation (affecting cloud seeding) makes historical W/m^2 variation far more than TSI variation alone. Dr. Shaviv’s specific estimate, as shown on his website at http://www.sciencebits.com/OnClimateSensitivity , is (0.35 +/- 0.09) K / (W/m^2) … which, aside from the uncertainties, is an estimate of 1 / 0.35 W/m^2 per degree Celsius, so around 2.9 W/m^2 per degree Celsius.
Unlike TSI which varies less, cosmic ray flux has been estimated as around 30% different during the Maunder Minimum from mid 20th century values, as shown in the Kirkby plot within http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif (which also shows matches of cosmic ray forcing to variation in sea level, humidity, cloud cover, and temperature — enlarging on further click).
Totally not buying it. You will have to retract your post one of these days and be counted among the folks who saw a correlation and thought “CAUSE” without bothering with a plausible mechanism. Plus, you can grow wine grapes in Tibet though its very cold up there with a short growing season. Adaptation will happen when intrinsic parameters once again send the mercury south.
The analysis of the potential climatic impact of a shift in the solar output is interesting, though like all climate inputs, the solar changes noted are but one of a number of factors that influence the effects felt or experienced in terms of local or regional weather.
The outcomes predicted in the final paragraph, however, are rather too Ehrlich-like: “The starving populations of Egyptian cities will fan out into the countryside and consume whatever they can chew which will include the seed grain. That will ensure that domestic grain production will collapse. The population of Egypt might fall to 10% of its carrying capacity which would be 5% of its current level.”
Ehrlich’s original predictions of imminent planetary doom came at a time when the world was gripped in a cooling cycle. His predictions for the effect of “weather changes” (rather than “climatic changes”, which came into vogue later), were the imminent collapse of countries such as India. Roger Pielke Jr. has a copy of Ehrlich’s 1974 Senate testimony to that effect – see: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.ca/2013/09/1974-ehrlich-and-holdren-senate.html . (According to that testimony, by the way, we ran out of oil 13 years ago…).
That a cooling/drying phase would likely impact grain production is true: what that will translate into in geo-political terms and regional population effects will very much depend on human responses to the challenge.
It is of interest to compare this cooling forecast with the more conservative one (done by a different method than the useless modelling approach) in the latest cooling update at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
here are the conclusions- note item 9
“To summarise- Using the 60 and 1000 year quasi repetitive patterns in conjunction with the solar data leads straightforwardly to the following reasonable predictions for Global SSTs
1 Continued modest cooling until a more significant temperature drop at about 2016-17
2 Possible unusual cold snap 2021-22
3 Built in cooling trend until at least 2024
4 Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2035 – 0.15
5Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2100 – 0.5
6 General Conclusion – by 2100 all the 20th century temperature rise will have been reversed,
7 By 2650 earth could possibly be back to the depths of the little ice age.
8 The effect of increasing CO2 emissions will be minor but beneficial – they may slightly ameliorate the forecast cooling and more CO2 would help maintain crop yields .
9 Warning !!
The Solar Cycles 2,3,4 correlation with cycles 21,22,23 would suggest that a Dalton minimum could be imminent. The Livingston and Penn Solar data indicate that a faster drop to the Maunder Minimum Little Ice Age temperatures might even be on the horizon.If either of these actually occur there would be a much more rapid and economically disruptive cooling than that forecast above which may turn out to be a best case scenario.
How confident should one be in these above predictions? The pattern method doesn’t lend itself easily to statistical measures. However statistical calculations only provide an apparent rigour for the uninitiated and in relation to the IPCC climate models are entirely misleading because they make no allowance for the structural uncertainties in the model set up.This is where scientific judgement comes in – some people are better at pattern recognition and meaningful correlation than others.A past record of successful forecasting such as indicated above is a useful but not infallible measure. In this case I am reasonably sure – say 65/35 for about 20 years ahead. Beyond that certainty drops rapidly.I am sure,however, that it will prove closer to reality than anything put out by the IPCC, Met Office or the NASA group. In any case this is a Bayesian type forecast- in that it can easily be amended on an ongoing basis as the Temperature and Solar data accumulate.
Whoooo-oooo
This is frightening – if the assumptions are granted.
Auto
Look folks, this is a classic case of a false positive. One cycle is faster than the other. Therefore through chance alone a shorter weather pattern variation cycle (cold snaps) will occur in the time frame of a longer “spotless Sun” period (IE slightly before, during, or slight after) and have no teleconnections with the spotless Sun whatsoever. Yet, there will be tons of folk who will swear they have found a bullet proof correlation just waiting for a smarter person to come along and find the teleconnection mechanism.
Horse apples are being fed to gullible people. Just like the CO2 scare.
A recent article in Environmental Science & Technology by Keeler, et. al (10.1021/es402181y) discussed the Federal Agency Models (DOE/USDA/EPA) for achieving RFS2 target production volumes. This includes 16B gal/yr of corn ethanol and 16B gal/yr of cellulosic biofuels (mostly CE ethanol). Corn ethanol will be directly impacted by reduced yield as GDD’s drop. Models were expecting increased corn yield as has been happening for the last few decades. A drop in yield will throw all these models off by quite a bit. CE yields are based on multiple crops, but mixed prairie grasses and corn stover are the primary feedstocks for these yet to be build CE fuel processing plants. (Note that the massive land area needed to grow energy crops will be taken from pasture land making beef prices rise.) The DOE anticipates 527 such plant are needed to produce sufficient fuel to meet the RFS2 requirements. These plants will cost between $200MM to $400MM each necessitating a capital investment of up to $210B. This level of funding will be hard to come by in today’s financial market.
All these investments, plans and projections will be thrown in the trash heap of history if the projections in this article even partly come to pass. So if we fail to meet RFS2 mandates, count on the government to do exactly the wrong thing to keep fuel production on target (if it can even be done). I expect the food-for-fuel issue to become more of a polarizing issue in the near future.
corraltion/causation ..you may be wrong, you may be right, but we can make one prediction : all prediction will fail.
I found this 2003 paper a while back: http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0312244
It furthers some research started by Royal Astronomer Sir William Hershel in 1801.
Abstract:
The database of Prof. Rogers (1887), which includes wheat prices in England in the Middle Ages, was used to search for a possible influence of solar activity on the wheat market. We present a conceptual model of possible modes for sensitivity of wheat prices to weather conditions, caused by solar cycle variations, and compare expected price fluctuations with price variations recorded in medieval England.
We compared statistical properties of the intervals between wheat price bursts during years 1249-1703 with statistical properties of the intervals between minimums of solar cycles during years 1700-2000. We show that statistical properties of these two samples are similar, both for characteristics of the distributions and for histograms of the distributions. We analyze a direct link between wheat prices and solar activity in the 17th Century, for which wheat prices and solar activity data (derived from 10Be isotope) are available. We show that for all 10 time moments of the solar activity minimums the observed prices were higher than prices for the correspondent time moments of maximal solar activity (100% sign correlation, on a significance level < 0.2%). We consider these results as a direct evidence of the causal connection between wheat prices bursts and solar activity.
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 8, 2013 at 10:16 am
Willis, send me an email and I will send you the Excel file.
As I said in the post, the agricultural response will be complicated. Farmers could switch to winter wheat and actually produce more tonnes of a lower quality product. We would get the protein but we wouldn’t be able to make good bread out of it. Corn and soybeans are the most profitable crops in the Corn Belt. You can switch to lower GDD varieties and you produce less. A 20% to 25% reduction is close to the mark in my opinion.
I recommend looking at Joe Bastardi’s weekly weather show at Weatherbell. The far northeast of the US is going to have its shortest growing season ever from last snow to first frost.
Ric Werme says:
September 8, 2013 at 2:43 pm
“I found this 2003 paper a while back: http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0312244
Good find.
Speaking of similar topics, I always liked the following observation from Bond et al 2001:
“Over the last 12000 years, virtually every centennial time scale increase in drift ice documented in our North Atlantic records was tied to a distinct interval of variable and, overall, reduced solar output. A solar influence on climate of the magnitude and consistency implied by our evidence could not have been confined to the North Atlantic.” ( http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/seminars/spring2006/Mar1/Bond%20et%20al%202001.pdf )
William Abbott says:
September 8, 2013 at 9:54 am
“Yes David, peak food and peak oil. Somehow we will manage to increase yields if the temps turn downward. Look at the yield growth over the last sixty years. Just like oil; we will keep finding new techniques that make your static models fail.”
Doug Proctor says:
September 8, 2013 at 10:29 am
Pamela Gray says:
September 8, 2013 at 1:02 pm
“Totally not buying it.”
Good debating points by naysayers but when all the hype is about temps going the other way, we may be a little late in making the right choice on selection of colder varieties and planting grapes and the like – it isn’t an instant-returns game. Do y’all believe that the UK, Brussels and the like are sitting there comfortably with their 100million tonne cold weather seed ready to go. No, its probably against the law to experiment with it – even in the US Departments it is a disciplinary matter to even talk about such a thing I’m guessing from recent bans on employees criticizing the IPCC.
Cold weather strains have long-ago been made into bread or diesel and we are overly stocked with hot seeds. Ya know the agriculture colleges and farmers are busy developing growing seed that resists perennial wildfires, drought and tropical pestilence. Archibald may be over-cautioning everyone about a cooling, but the theory of what-goes-up-must-come-down did get a boost from the past decade’s CO2 -Thermageddon falsifications and making windmills into plowshares does take a little time. Oh all will be fine after the 5 years of turnaround in our farming practices but a few Egyptians could die while we retool.
David — I was with you until the last two paragraphs — relating to standard population dynamics of predator/prey relationships. Human populations have not historically shown this type of response to hard times — buffered by humans ability to think and plan their way out of harm’s way.
Only plagues, before modern medicine, and communism have been successful at knocking back human populations to any great degree — so far.
Corn and other grain to ethanol mandates are nothing less then a crime rising to the level of genocide. Regardless of the level of accuracy of this gloomy forecast, how would you like to be the Egyptian Mother unable to feed her child on her meager income because some elite in the USA has decreed that so much ethanol must be produced and used as motor fuel. Remember that death by starvation is a slow process. The emotional pain of the Mother (and Father) is UNCAUCULATABLE. Is it any wonder they hate us so!
While correlation is not causation, the absence of a known causation is not proof that one does not exist. In fact it is correlations that precipitate scientific investigation, or at least should do so.
With regard to the solar climate link, as great or as small as it may be (and I favor the former), does cause and effect have to be synchronous. The lack of, or periodic departure from synchronicity appears to be the reason why some poo bah this link.
Having been involved in data collection in the environmental field I have consistently found that departures from a specific pattern or cycle are regular events simply because an effect may be subject to several causes. In fact I would be extremely suspicious of an data that showed a purely arithmetic association, at least in the field where I worked. Sililarly I would expect a degree of stochasticity to exist in any solar climate link.
However I will observe the next decade with interest.
Doug Proctor says:
September 8, 2013 at 10:29 am
A little more rigor please Doug. When I started out in this field in 2005, the attitude of the sceptic community was that global warming was happening but it would be a lot milder than what the warmers were predicting. I said,”No its not. The Sun controls climate and all we have to do is figure out what the Sun is going to do.” At that stage, the spread in Solar Cycle 24 predictions was 50 at the bottom end to 190 at the top end. The literature said that that range would be a difference in 2.0 degrees C on Earth. Nobody was taking any notice at the time of those bottom end forecasts which turned out to be very close to the mark. And the Earth is now cooling in response.
Forward seven years and we now have the situation in which the only forecast extant for Solar Cycle 25 is of a maximum amplitude of 7. This is a Maunder Minimum-type number though the term Maunder Minimum implies perhaps 50 years of such low numbers. That forecast is backed up by Schatten and Tobiska’s 2003 paper. And a Finnish tree ring study. And Libby and Pandolfi.
What I like about the 1974 CIA report is that they state what has been forgotten – “the Earth has , on the average, enjoyed the best agricultural climate since the eleventh century.” What humanity has enjoyed for the last 100 years is a once in a thousand years event. It is not the normal condition. We are returning to the normal condition. The question is – what will it be like? That is what this post is about. Quantifying the fall and its consequences.
etudiant says:
September 8, 2013 at 10:38 am
The [range] available to farmers is 1400 GDD barley at one end to 2700 GDD corn at the other. We already have the cold tolerant varieties. You will produce less directly in proportion to GDD and it might be a different grain.
Ancient Egypt according bible, stored grain. Perhaps they should store grain, again.
We now have tremendous ability to modify the characteristics of plants by direct genetic modification, instead of the slow trial and error process of selective breeding.
While cooler conditions probably could not be entirely compensated for, developing cold resistance could be the next growth area for plant research.
ian005 says:
September 8, 2013 at 1:16 pm
True. Sometimes people just starve in place. That happened in the Irish potato famine. The last major starvation event was in the 1967 drought in India with 1 million dead. And the Chinese were able to starve 45 million people to death in the Great Leap Forward and hold society together. One the other hand the Swiss ate their domestic animals in 1816 and started chewing on leather. Will the Egyptians go quietly into that good night? No, I think they will eat their seed grain.
In respect of Figure 7, the relationship can be given by Lotka–Volterra equation like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equation
dx/dt = x(alpha – beta y)
dy/dt = – y(gamma – delta x)
The question is a lag between the peaks. In other words, how much time do we have before the system breaks down?
David Archibald says:
September 8, 2013 at 2:53 pm
Absolutely not. Post it up in public for everyone to see, along with the details on the origin of the data itself, or it ain’t science.
w.
Gary Pearse says:
September 8, 2013 at 3:06 pm
And just what do you imagine that they are planting in Canada, Gary … hot weather strains?
w.
David Archibald says:
September 8, 2013 at 3:23 pm
David Archibald says:
September 8, 2013 at 3:26 pm
David. I fear that you’re the one who needs more rigor. The corn yield in Canada is 83,611 Hg/Ha, and that of the US is 77,442 Hg/Ha (source FAO).
Or take another example. The wheat yield in the US is 31,140 Hg/Ha, and that of Ireland is 63,061 Hg/Ha.
In other words, things are nowhere near as simple as you imagine them to be, and your claim that cold automatically equals less production is totally contradicted by the actual yield data.
w.
I believe all the problems discussed in the article are basically political not physical. Sunspots have very little affect on the body politic.
Kip Hansen says:
September 8, 2013 at 3:15 pm
Involuntary vegetarianism will keep the circus going for a bit longer. Animal protein will get a lot more expensive. But a large proportion of the planet currently spends about half their income on food. What happens when the price goes up? As for thinking and planning, the EPA is currently trying to shut down the US coal industry on the basis of voodoo science. That is one thing – the Obama administration promised it and they are delivering on their promise. But where is the clamor against it? In this country, the major airline, Qantas, two years ago shut down many flights because they saw a wisp of dust in the air from a volcano 20,000 km away in Chile. It is one thing for government departments to be run by arts graduates with no life experience, it is another for a major commercial enterprise to harm its customers and shareholders because of voodoo. These people can’t have played outside as children. There will not be any thinking and planning. There will only be reaction to events. Clumsy and stupid reaction to unexpected events, such as the climate returning to its normal condition.
Some papers for/against the impact of solar cycles on food prices.
Influence of Solar Activity on State of Wheat Market in Medieval EnglandA. Pustilnik, Gregory Yom Din
Possible Space Weather Influence on the Earth Wheat Markets
On Possible Influence of Space Weather on Agricultural Markets: Necessary Conditions and Probable Scenariosm, L. Pustil’nik and G. Yom Din
On the insignificance of Herschel’s sunspot correlation Jeffrey J. Love
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 8, 2013 at 3:59 pm
Corn growing conditions in Canada are more favourable than those in the US? Think, Willis, think.
2 points
1. GDD isn’t the limiting factor in some important wheat producing areas. Rather it’s soil moisture. Here in Western Australia, a cooler climate would result in increased yields. In addition, there are large areas that are currently not used for agriculture which could be brought into production in a cooler and wetter climate.
2. Like Doug Proctor, my main concern is a large volcanic eruption at the wrong time. Over timescales of years to decades I have no doubt we could adapt to cooling. Although with short term problems in the MENA, and with ample cheap energy.
IMO the triple whammy of artificially high energy costs, climate cooling, and a volcanic eruption is likely what will get us into serious food supply trouble.
“””””……Henry Clark says:
September 8, 2013 at 12:54 pm
george e. smith says:
September 8, 2013 at 12:29 pm
“The amplitude of the annual cycling for the modern warm period, is clearly significantly higher than the amplitude during the earlier period in the 1850 to 1910 period. yet the value differs by about 1 w/m^2; less than 0.1%”
Figure 4 in this article incorrectly states 1 W/m^2 per 0.6 degrees Celsius while strangely attributing that particular number to Dr. Nir Shaviv. …….”””””
Henry, Nothing you wrote has anything to do with the fact that the annual cycle in TSI, due simply to the variation in the sun earth distance, should have an amplitude that is proportional to the mean TSI value, which is only 0.1% different between the 1850-1910 period, and the modern warm period, yet the graph shows much more amplitude difference than that; maybe 50 times as much amplitude difference.
Finland & Estonian Famines 1695-97
Lack of stored food can rapidly result in famine.
Finland lost about 30% of its population and Estonia about 20% in the Great Famine of 1695-97.
Neumann, J.; Lindgrén, S. (1979). “Great Historical Events That Were Significantly Affected by the Weather: 4, <a href=The Great Famines in Finland and Estonia 1695–97″. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 60 (7): pp775–787. doi:10.1175/1520-0477(1979)0602.0.CO;2. ISSN 1520-0477.
David,
Here’s a link to the original paper
Libby, L. M. & L. J. Pandolfi. (1974) Temperature Dependence of Isotope Ratios in Tree Rings. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA Vol. 71, No. 6, pp. 2482-2486.
While steel grain bins are ubiquitous in North America, some countries can suffer losses of harvested crop exceeding 50% in population boom years for rats, mice, or other vermin.
Improving storage thus offers another method of ensuring food supplies even if the crops themselves are less productive.
Interesting article, but just as the earth is much more adaptive to factors affecting global temperatures, the human population is also very creative and adaptive in times of crisis. There will not be a massive food problem like you are suggesting here (unless all the governments in the world take over the food production systems, then we are doomed). The capitalistic system will provide us with all the food we need. Remember there are many millions of acres in South America that could be put into production if the incentive was there. And this is only one of the many changes that could result in more food production. If you scare too many people the elites will try to take over just like they are trying for global warming.
I’ll just be happy if we go back to 1970s temps. That should shut the AGWers up for good and completely end this nonsense.
(Simpleton alert)
We have better transportation now than back when people starved to death due to the climate. If the Vikings had the transportation available to them that we have now, they might still be here.
The grain belt moves south, so what? We can still move the foodstuffs where they need to go.
If I have to eat grass-fed animals instead of grain-fed animals, I will still be fed.
If these “projections” do have some validity, ramp up CO2 production world-wide so the plant matter has a better chance.
I really wish people would stop complaining about Ethanol production. It’s not that bad. If you have ever seen the crappy grain that gets delivered to those plants that produce ethanol, you might not wish to eat grain yourself. It comes from the bottom of the pile and filled with bugs and dirt. They clean it up, get some energy out of it and then feed it to livestock that tastes really good.
This is just more fear-mongering. IMHO.
A few thoughts from a guy who has lived in Manitoba for more than four decades. Farmers know that the two most important dates are the last frost in spring and the first frost in fall. For the last two decades Canada Agriculture has worked hard on developing “85 day corn”. Only because of price has corn acreage expanded greatly in the last few years. Yes, we do have 85 day corn- it took a lot of sequential breeding. The GDD are still important, but primarily to beat the frost. Any change that may occur regarding cooling probably can be accommodated by Canadian seed. However, we don’t have 75 day corn, so Canada would drop out of the corn production.
Crop options are wider than most folks think. We have short and long season Canola, a wide variety of barley and wheat, and even some short season specialty crops. In the long term, precipitation is a greater determinant of yield than temperature. Our water situation is always a matter of too much or too little- with too little being the biggest problem. Last and first frost, however, can trump all other factors. A few hundred GDDs after a first frost are useless.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_zkLPSWe75rc/TTIIxnWgnfI/AAAAAAAAAHo/FAj5IINeqLw/s1600/Corn%2Bpile%2Bat%2Bgrain%2Belevator.JPG
David:
You cited a number of events – Irish potato famine, Indian famine of 1967 (which undoubtedly was one of the events driving Ehrlich’s views in the early 1970s), and the Chinese GLF fiasco. In the latter case, the famine was driven by political, not solar or climactic, events – rather like the Ukrainian famine of 1932-34, where the Soviets’ collectivization policies included deliberate starvation of an unwilling populace. The issue for India in 1967 was infrastructure related and political mismanagement of a crisis, as much as it was absolute lack of food. Can climatically-driven food shortages cause political collapse or drive societal change? Yes, of course: Fernand Braudel and the Annales School of historical analysis consider the events of the longue durée as the essential ingredients driving societal change. Is it inevitable? No. Likely? Hard to say and certainly hard to predict. Your final paragraph, to me, smacked of alarmism and nothing more. Unfortunately, it puts you squarely in the company of Ehrlich (and Hansen, and other fellow travelers). It detracts from the analysis, rather than adds to it. It is speculation (rather wildly expressed, at that) and nothing more.
I have worked with these issues for decades including all the issues discussed here. I have even studied the correlations with sunspots and Lynx cycles. (the pattern relates to the 11 year solar cycle (8 to 14 year variance).
http://drtimball.com/2011/tipping-points-are-natural-environmentalists-exploit-them/
The big issue and in my opinion the big mistake made in this article is the pattern of food production is not a function of temperature, except in extreme years like 1816, the “year with no summer.” The critical issue for world food production is the pattern of precipitation in the middle latitudes (35 to 60° latitude). That is a ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ cycle with the only variance being the intensity of the dry cycles.
Beyond the incorrect focus on temperature as a determinant of yields there is the assumption that a solar cycle will manifest in all climate data for the entire globe.
The pattern of crop yields in the middle latitudes are determined by the precipitation pattern which is coincident with the 22 year sunspot cycle. This was identified years ago and was the underpinning, although he didn’t know about the connection, for the Kondratieff Cycle
http://www.angelfire.com/or/truthfinder/index22.html
I have published about the relationship between the 22 year cycle and the drought sequence.
“Climatic Change, Droughts and Their Social Impact: Central Canada, 1811-20, a classic example.” In C.R.Harington (ed) The Year Without a Summer? World Climate in 1816. 1992, National Museum of Natural Sciences, Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa
I also identified how the droughts alternate between ‘cold’ droughts with only slightly elevated temperatures, lower precipitation and moderate wind increases, and ‘hot’ droughts with high temperatures, low precipitation and very strong winds. These hot droughts correlate with the Kondratieff Cycle.
The IPCC has the world focussed on CO2 and temperature – it is time to recognize the importance of H2O and precipitation.
Tim Ball says:
September 8, 2013 at 7:32 pm
You are correct to emphasize drought rather than temperature. Well do I recall the severe drought year of 1977 in the Pacific Northwest, not equaled since, although 2001 came closest. All was made clear to me in 1997 with the discovery of the PDO.
I already was as sure as I could be that CACA was utter nonsense, but discovery of the Pacific & Atlantic oscillations clinched it for me.
Thanks David, good work. You show a small rise in Australian exports which I think is correct. It should be noted that much of this export grain currently goes to the middle east. Its often aussie wheat that’s milled in Cairo. Thus the rise in export from Australia may help a little in the middle east. The catch is the profitability of the Australian farmers and the stability of the subsidies in the middle east itself. I’m not expecting much reform in the middle east politically and while, with capitalisation their farming could be much more productive, again thats not likely. Islam’s ban on interest bearing loans cripples its rural capitalisation.
One item of good news is that we are seeing new crops, some of which are well suited to changed climate and land that is normaly not arrible. Nupa, Distichlis palmeri, has been bred up in stocks as a UN responce to sea level rise. Since sea level rise is a no show the seed stock of Nupa could be retasked in area’s of high salt risk, Its a Halophyte grain that can be irrigated with sea water in most latitudes. A significant yeald could be possible in the Delta and on the desert coasts feeding egypt, etc. The choice would be famine or a new crop. Both the Dalton and Maunder minimum are periods of new crop experimentation in many parts of the world. We need to push that solition again.
@David Archibald
David,
Why do you have to use the term ‘consensus’ to describe the current low solar activity? Does anyone currently deny that SC24 is the smallest observed solar cycle in 100 years?
Observation trumps prediction, so who cares what Schatten predicted in 2003? And why do you keep using that fake “SIDC data” (in Figure 1) to prove that SC24 resembles SC5? (Leif pointed out the same error to you in July, but you still keep claiming it is “SIDC data”: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/28/solar-cycle-24-update-2/#comment-1373256)
Actually, SC24 most closely resembles SC14 (looking at the real SIDC data):
http://www.solen.info/solar/cycl5.html
http://www.solen.info/solar/cycl14.html
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/cycles23_24.png
But there was no cooling in 1902-1913, was there? So perhaps your motive in mentioning SC5 and the Maunder and Dalton periods, was to link your argument to the historical fact that these solar minima also coincided with cooler temperatures.
But this might give the false impression that there is some kind of ‘consensus’ that the current low solar activity will also lead to lower temperatures. The truth is that there is no consensus that this historical cooling was caused by low solar activity. Yes, it is being actively debated and investigated. But no one has a convincing explanation of this historical correlation of cooling and low solar magnetic activity.
So please get your facts straight, and quit trying to use alarmist tactics to persuade us that there will be too much cooling.
😐
I’m curious about faster maturing crops. If the quantity of harvest is the same, why wouldn’t farmers use the shorter season crops every year? Perhaps they could get two crops in, or just get an extra week at Punta Gorda. You have to suspect that the slower growing crops take in those extra degree-days to produce a greater tonnage of food. So a shorter season does imply less production despite the faster growing crops.
Day suggests: “But there was no cooling in 1902-1913, was there?”
Well, 1910 is about the time of the minimum before the ~~1910-1940 warming period.
It was a cool period compared to prior and afterward.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/HadCRUT4.pdf
For those wanting to go all Chicken Little on this thread, I’d highly recommend reading the Chief’s thoughts on the topic first. Perhaps Anthony would publish it.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/grains-and-why-food-will-stay-plentiful/
In Canada, the Globe and Mail rehashes the Munich Re report about droughts… typical alarmist crap…
Farmers are smarter than this article implies, today they are more a scientist than any “climatologist”, that’s for sure, you can bank on it. No worries, the world is “greening” due to the increase in co2 as we speak and you can thank mankind’s using fossil fuels every meal for it.
Kip Hansen said @ September 8, 2013 at 3:15 pm
And what caused those plagues? Is it a mere coincidence that they occurred during periods of climatic cooling and crop failures?
For those questioning the relationship between temperature and precipitation, it’s interesting to note that in the Asian/Siberian hotspot that summer soil moisture as measured is higher than during the 60s & 70s. Of course the AOGCMs say the opposite, but c’est la vie.
Willis Eschenbach said @ September 8, 2013 at 10:24 am
I seem to recall that the USSR became a wheat importing region during the cooling of the 60s and 70s. Curiously, the same period that saw mass starvation in Bangladesh, sub-Saharan Africa and several other places.
You say farmers will switch to short season crops as if they had any say in such things these days. You sow what’s available in a market dominated by the likes of Monsanto who successfully sued Canadian farmer Percy Schmeisser for sowing home-saved seed. A century ago there were more than 200 varieties of savoy cabbage seed available in the catalogues. Twenty years ago, that was down to less than a dozen. Today less than 5. The genetic base of our food is rapidly growing smaller making the food production system vulnerable not just to a climate shift, but also new diseases. Think Irish potato famine: small genetic base, limited number of crop varieties (few grains for example) and a minor climate shift.
Dr. Bob says: @ September 8, 2013 at 2:09 pm
….. CE yields are based on multiple crops, but mixed prairie grasses and corn stover are the primary feedstocks for these yet to be build CE fuel processing plants. (Note that the massive land area needed to grow energy crops will be taken from pasture land making beef prices rise.)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
“The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1937
Pasture land is normally pasture land because it is marginal for growing crops (too hilly, too rocky, too wet.) Rotating from crops to pasture increase the amount of organic matter in the soil, that is it produces top soil. When you remove the grasses and corn stover (leaves and stalks of maize) and burn it as biofuel you are literally “burning your top soil’ by removing the manure/compost that would normally be returned to the soil.
E.M. Smith (ChiefIO) had an article that illustrates this problem at its most primitive.
This is a simple illustration of what the ‘Biofuel’ mania is doing in a much more sophisticated manner. Instead of farmers aiding Mother Nature in producing a more fertile soil, the soil is now ‘mined’ until no topsoil is left. ‘Biofuel’ is equivalent to burning the goat manure. With “Big Money’ moving into farming there is no incentive to keep the farm productive for the grandkids. Once a farm is no longer productive ‘Big Money’ will just move on to the next boom and bust.
ALSO SEE: How to build new topsoil
There is a lot of information out there on loss of topsoil and how to prevent it/rebuild it. Burning it as ‘Biofuel’ is not one of them.
The Pompous Git says: @ September 8, 2013 at 10:06 pm
[Willis]You say farmers will switch to short season crops as if they had any say in such things these days. You sow what’s available in a market dominated by the likes of Monsanto who successfully sued Canadian farmer Percy Schmeisser for sowing home-saved seed. A century ago there were more than 200 varieties of savoy cabbage seed available in the catalogues. Twenty years ago, that was down to less than a dozen. Today less than 5. The genetic base of our food is rapidly growing smaller making the food production system vulnerable not just to a climate shift, but also new diseases…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You nailed it!
Here is the information to back up what you are saying.
FAO is supporting harmonization of seed rules and regulations in Africa and Central Asia in order to stimulate the development of a vibrant seed industry “…An effective seed regulation harmonization process involves dialogue amongst all relevant stakeholders from both private and public sectors. Seed quality assurance, variety release, plant variety protection, biosafety, plant quarantine and phytosanitary issues are among the major technical areas of a regional harmonized seed system. The key to a successful seed regulation harmonization is a strong political will of the governments involved….” http://www.fao.org/ag/portal/archive/detail/en/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=5730&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=1886&cHash=7f04326e35
However Big Ag is nor interested in preserve non-commercial breeds.
Patenting in plants is much further ahead.
1961 PVP is the Plant Variety Protection: The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants: Gave seed companies a monopoly on only the commercial multiplication and the marketing of seeds. Farmers remained free to save seed from their own harvest to plant in the following year, and other breeders could freely use any variety, protected or not, to develop a new one. http://www.patentlens.net/daisy/KeyOrgs/1236/428.html
1980 the Supreme Court decision in Diamond v. Chakrabarthy, 447 U.S. 303 enabled living organisms to be patented. http://www.wisbar.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Wisconsin_Lawyer&template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&contentid=49620
1991 PVP monopoly has applied to seed multiplication and also to the harvest and sometimes the final product as well. Previously unlimited right of farmers to save seed for the following year’s planting has been changed into an optional exception. Only if national government allows, can farm-saved seed still be used, and a royalty has to be paid to the seed company even for seeds grown on-farm. http://www.grain.org/seedling_files/smar2002.pdf
1995 World Trade Organization (WTO) formed. Former Cargill Vice-President, Dan Amstutz, drafts the original text of the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture.
July 26, 2002: Report Finds Fundamental Flaws in WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture: Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy report argues that the Agreement on Agriculture fails to account for agri-business’ monopoly over global agricultural trade. http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/891.html
May, 2003, the European Patent Office in Munich granted a patent to Monsanto with the number EP 445929, with the simple title “plants”, even though plants are not patentable in European Law. http://www.countercurrents.org/en-shiva270404.htm
June 2006 Global Diversity Treaty: Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA) a standardized contract that will enable much easier access to crop diversity. [ germplasm for patenting] royalty payment (1.1% of sales) is paid only if product is unavailable for further breeding and research. funds will be devoted to conservation efforts. Translation: Bio-techs Corporations steal seed from third world farmers, patents it and pay money to Bioversity International http://www.bioversityinternational.org/publications/pdf/1144.pdf
December 2006 “In the EU, there is now a list of ‘official’ vegetable varieties. Seed that is not on the list cannot be ‘sold’ to the ‘public’ To keep something on the list costs thousands of pounds each year…Hundreds of thousands of old heirloom varieties (the results of about eleven thousand years of plant breeding by our ancestors) are being lost forever . http://www.defra.gov.uk/planth/pvs/pbr/app-procedure.htm & http://www.realseeds.co.uk/terms.html & http://www.euroseeds.org/pdf/ESA_03.0050.1.pdf”
Feb 2007 GRAIN press release USA: Seed companies want to ban farm-saved seeds
A new report from GRAIN reveals the new lobbying offensive from the global seed industry to make it a crime for farmers to save seeds for the next year’s planting. See History at http://www.gmfreeireland.org/news/2007/feb.php
Feb 2007 Clones declared save: FDA decides based on “risk assessment” that meat and milk from adult clones and their offspring are as safe to consume as those from standard animals. http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/02/354270.shtml
April 2007 Monsanto, Cargill and Maseca-ADM sign agreements to establish regional seed banks in the center and south of Mexico. http://www.counterpunch.org/ross11212007.html
September 2007 Arctic Seed Vault http://www.physorg.com/news90236313.html
January 8 2008 ~In the UK Defra has dropped the word ‘farming’ from its title. “Defra and the Treasury’s joint vision document of 2006 presented to the EU argued that supports for farming should be completely abandoned..” http://www.warmwell.com/archivejan2008.html
May 2008 Bio-tech companies lobby to lift ban against terminator gene http://www.gmfreeireland.org/news/2008/may.php
The “Cognitive Dissonance” demonstration over learning, “It’s the Sun Stupid”, is fascinating.
Bill_W says:
September 8, 2013 at 12:49 pm
This is not peak food. This is the effect of temp. on food production, which can have serious effect depending on how cold it gets.
—————————————————–
Especially being that the world now holds over 7 billion people.
We are currently at a 15 to 20 year ‘Pause’ in temperatures if the data sets are to be believed.
The temperature can either continue not to change get warmer or get cooler. Without looking at any other data it is a 50/50 chance of it becoming warmer or cooler.
However:
# 1. The Arctic and Antarctic sea ice are both growing this year.
# 2. Long term the Greenland snow accumulation is increasing Graph Alley GISP2 – 2000
# 3. The Northern hemisphere fall (oct.) snow is increasing: graph
# 4. A significant percentage of the glaciers in the Himalayas are expanding.
# 5. Norway is Experiencing Greatest Glacial Activity in the past 1,000 year… most glaciers likely didn’t exist 6,000 years ago, but the highest period of the glacial activity has been in the past 600 years.
# 6. The jet stream has gone from zonal to a meridional pattern.
# 7. NASA: Quiet Sun Means Cooling of Earth’s Upper Atmosphere
# 8. NASA: Quiet Interlude in Solar Max: Something unexpected is happening on the Sun. 2013 was supposed to be the year of “solar maximum,” the peak of the 11-year sunspot cycle. Yet 2013 has arrived and solar activity is relatively low. Sunspot numbers are well below their values from 2011, and strong solar flares have been infrequent.
Given the above, I think the odds favor cooling rather than warming in the next decades. We are after all trending down in energy from the Holocene Optimum. graph: summer solar energy of the Northern Hemisphere from link
Gail Combs said @ September 8, 2013 at 11:27 pm
Hmmmm… maybe it’s time I rewrote this and brought it into the 21stC:
http://www.sturmsoft.com/Writing/FarmFert/farmfert01.htm
and published it as an eBook.
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 8, 2013 at 3:48 pm
Gary Pearse says:
September 8, 2013 at 3:06 pm
Cold weather strains have long-ago been made into bread or diesel and we are overly stocked with hot seeds.
“And just what do you imagine that they are planting in Canada, Gary … hot weather strains?”
Well we will then need colder weather strains won’t we and Canada isn’t going to be able to supply the word with the seed they will need. I want to be careful getting deeper into this as I, too, don’t believe we will throw in the towel – probably TX, AZ, NM and Mex will be then able to plant IA, IN, WI, etc grains – Canada will raise sheep – assuming the cooling won’t be too steep and quick.
Tim Ball says:
September 8, 2013 at 7:32 pm
All the emphasis on GDD forgets as Tim Ball says the other factors. So let’s say that in the ‘corn belt’ after the late spring frost there is no or very little rain until late July when there are heavy flooding rains for the next 6 to 8 weeks when the first snows and frosts arrive in September on flooded muddy fields that then freeze. If you cannot plant then it really doesn’t matter what the GDD requirement is – if your harvest is flooded for a few weeks again you have lost. It does seem that people expect the changes to be just in ‘temperature’ – yet the meridonal jets have already shown that is not the case. At the start of the Little Ice Age there was ‘The Great Famine’ caused by locked in weather patterns causing continual rains in Europe, and no doubt droughts elsewhere.
It is nice easy maths to use something like GDD but that is based on ‘all else being equal’ – and it won’t be.
John Day says:
September 8, 2013 at 8:19 pm
When I sat down to write this piece, I deliberately chose to use the word consensus because the warmers had used it to shut down discussion. Irony is the term. One of life’s little pleasures is tormenting lefties, particularly the idiotic warmer lefties. Six years ago I was a lone voice saying that cooling is coming. Now it is the mainstream view.
Now you mention Dr Svalgaard, in fact you may be Dr Svalgaard. Dr Svalgaard has stated something, but it is not that the Sun affects the Earth’s climate. What does the Bible say? The Bible says “There are none so blind as those who will not see.” By regurgitating the purported views of Dr Svalgaard, you have made yourself a discredited element, to quote Marxist lexicology.
There are two clues that you are in fact Dr Svalgaard. One is this part sentence,”so who cares what Schatten predicted in 2003?” Someone who is not a solar physicist would not refer to the eminent Dr Schatten with such contempt. Dr Schatten does careful, detailed and thoughtful work. See these papers from 2012 and 2013:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186%2F2193-1801-2-21
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/aa/2012/923578/citations/
At age 69, he continues to stump up to work each day in Maryland to help keep our satellites in orbit. How jealous you must be of someone who is held in such high esteem by the solar physics community.
The other hint is your use of the phrase,”this historical correlation of cooling and low solar magnetic activity”. I didn’t mention solar magnetic activity. In fact the piece used TSI solely. Only a solar physicist would have thrown that in out of the blue. By using the term “solar magnetic activity”, you have alerted us to the fact that you think that solar magnetic activity is the main driver of climate. And you know what, you are probably right. Lastly, the smiley face at the end is pure Svalgaard. The psychiatrists have a term for it – multiple personality disorder. I advise you to not seek treatment – it is very entertaining for the rest of us.
David Archibald says:
“If a farmer plants a 2,200 GDD corn crop in the expectation of a cool or short season and the season turns out to have been capable of growing a 2,500 GDD, then he has foregone about 12% of the value of the later maturing variety. If he plants a 2,500 GDD variety and the season falls short though, most of the value of the crop will be lost.”
I know how to produce deterministic weekly-monthly forecasts as far ahead as anyone would need, so much could be planned around. The first very problematic growing season will in 2016, with a very cold April-May-June, conditions will be as least as bad as those that triggered the Agra famine in India.
@Archibald
> The psychiatrists have a term for it – multiple personality disorder.
> I advise you to not seek treatment
Actually, you are the one who are exhibiting symptoms of delusional disorder here, believing that I am Leif Svalgaard. (!)
> By regurgitating the purported views of Dr Svalgaard,…
Yet another delusion. I didn’t quote any of Svalgaard’s ‘views’, only that he pointed out that you are incorrectly citing “SIDC data”. What is your response to that ‘purported’ charge?
> I didn’t mention solar magnetic activity…
You mentioned “solar activity”. This term, when used by solar scientists, is a rather specialized term and is not a synonym for “solar output”. It is shorthand for “solar magnetic activity cycle” and refers to cyclic activity associated with sunspots, which are best described as “magnetic storms on the Sun”. So the current “low solar activity” (the theme of your article, right?) is actually a manifestation of the Sun’s magnetic activity. Solar activity has little to do with solar output (TSI), which varies only 0.1% during these solar magnetic activity cycles.
>… refer to the eminent Dr Schatten with such contempt.
I meant no disrespect to Kenneth Schatten, whom I hold in high regard. My point was that you didn’t need to quote Schatten to ‘prove’ that current solar activity is very low. I think you used that reference to support your claims about global cooling, which is a distortion of what Schatten meant by “Solar Activity Heading for a Maunder Minimum”.
You don’t seem to be able (or willing) to separate your “science” from politics and theology. (I can’t tell what Leif’s political and religious beliefs are. They are not written on his sleeve.) So I regard you as a polemicist, not a scientist in the same league as Leif Svalgaard.
😐
Reply to David Archibald (September 8, 2013 at 4:05 pm)
“Kip Hansen says: September 8, 2013 at 3:15 pm Involuntary vegetarianism will keep the circus going for a bit longer. Animal protein will get a lot more expensive….”
The repeated assertion of your own predictions or those of others will not make your case, any more than it did for Paul Ehrlich or the Club of Rome.
You must be able to answer the points raised by critics on a reasonable and logical basis.
The point I raised in criticism of your last few paragraphs is that human populations have not historically followed the predator/prey population dynamic model which you depend on to wrap up your presentation.
Reply to The Pompous Git (September 8, 2013 at 9:37 pm)
Kip Hansen said @ September 8, 2013 at 3:15 pm ” Only plagues, …..~snip~”
“And what caused those plagues? Is it a mere coincidence that they occurred during periods of climatic cooling and crop failures?”
I believe that the most devastating plagues on human population were probably those in the Americas after the arrival of Europeans — totally unrelated to climate factors. Climate does not cause plagues. Climate factors can exacerbate plagues and vice versa.
Perhaps one should take this information and indulge in the grain markets at a commodities exchange. You could make millions.
Kip Hansen says:
September 9, 2013 at 5:57 am
I will tell you how it works. I do work and Anthony is kind enough to publish it on this blog. What is written is my best understanding based on everything. If you don’t like the result, that is your perogative. The alternative is for you to do some work. If there are 84 million Egyptians and there is only enough food for 40 million, how is that going to pan out?
Kip Hansen says:
September 9, 2013 at 6:03 am
In terms of number of people killed per year, IMO the 1918 Influenza Pandemic probably ranks as top pestilence. But longer-lasting plagues have killed more in total. The influenza however killed more in one year than the Black Death in all the years of its first appearance in Western Europe.
The epidemics & endemic infestations of smallpox, yellow fever, measles, TB & other Old World diseases (to include zoonotics from swine) did indeed wreak havoc in the New World after 1492, killing millions if not tens of millions in the following centuries. However I wouldn’t totally exonerate the deteriorating climate of the 15th to 19th centuries. In North America, the Mound Building Culture had already collapsed after 1400, with population decline from climate change. American populations were already suffering when hit with the new plagues. While the European oceanic Drang nach Westen (& Süden) was largely driven by the Turks’ closing off valuable commercial routes to the East, climate change also contributed to the Atlantic seafaring adventures of Spain, Portugal & other Christian powers.
David Archibald , you have been correct and I have been in complete agreement with your thoughts. I am going to resend to you my take on the solar climate relationship in my next post. Thanks.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
September 8, 2013 at 10:53 am
The story is in it’s beginning phase, and we will have to see first how quiet the prolonged solar minimum is, and how long it last.
If these solar parameters become established I expect a substancial cooling.
They are:
solat flux sub 90 sustained, sub 72 more severe.
solar wind sub 350km/sec. sustained, sub 300 km/sec. more severe.
ap index 5.0 or lower 98+% of the time.
cosimc ray count north of 6600 counts per minute sustained.
solar irradiance off .015% or more sustained.
EUV(extreme ultraviolet light) off upwards of 50% sustained.
The above following many years of sub-solar activity in general which commenced in late 2005..
The era of solar data from 1844-present has NO data to show how the climatic system of the earth may act to a prolonged solar minimum and the associated secondary effects with this type of solar action, because their has not been no such occurrence post the Dalton Minimum.
What we have had instead is a more or less active regular 11 year sunspot cycle with lulls and peaks,. This type of solar action in my opinion is not going to make for solar/climate correlations, because the the degree of magnitude change and duration of time of solar actvity was not extreme enough to over come random earthly climatic changes ,such as ENSO,VOLCANIC ACTIVITY ,PDO/AMO etc. and also not strong enough to overcome the inherent negative feedbacks in the earth climatic system.
Anotherwords for the solar /climate correlation to become established to some degree a critical threshold level of solar activity deviation must occur from what it has done prior.
It looks like this deviation in solar actiivty has commenced in year 2005 and should continue for some time which will allow us to see if indeed a solar /climatic relationship does or does not exist.
I think it does when one looks at the two most recent prolonged solar minimum periods, those being the Maunder Minimum and the Dalton Minimum and the response of the climate at those times.
As I write this the solar flux value is sub 100, and this is suppose to be the forecasted maximum of solar cycle 24 according to mainstream scientist.
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 8, 2013 at 10:24 am
I’m gonna have to protest this one:
I’ll join in. It is just as big a mistake to make to assume that the Earth is a one-knob climate system where that knob is (through a causal chain that has not yet been quantitatively, predictively, verified) the sun as it is to assume that the Earth is a one-knob climate system where that knob is (through a causal chain of complex feedbacks that have not yet been quantitatively, predictively, verified) CO_2 concentration in the atmosphere. Indeed, they both could be important knobs. So could other factors we might be including wrong in current oversimplified models or might be neglecting altogether.
Second, I have to say that I personally think that it is very, very unlikely that global average temperature is going to drop 0.9C over SS 24. We’re basically halfway through it, plausibly at its coarse-grained maximum, with no drop in sight. This is a forecast drop of well over 0.1C/year for the rest of SS24, and it would basically remove nearly all of the 20th century warming in only five or six years. I think this is highly implausible, although it would certainly be highly instructive if it were to occur. I’m aware of the FCL papers and their assertions (and have been for years) and attractive as their theory is, Leif at least would (and probably will:-) point out that it is based on solar activity data that underwent at least two fundamental renormalizations over the centuries that create an artificial inflation of late 20th century solar activity compared to the supposed long term mean. With that said, there is little doubt that SS24 will be the lowest in roughly 100 years and I think that he’d agree that SS25 could be (and maybe even “probably” will be) lower still.
Given that we cannot go back and recompute solar activity records, and that proxies tend to be relatively imprecise and average over uncertain intervals of time to boot, I’d have to say that the FCL general hypothesis, supported or not by the Svensmark hypothesis, remains an open question — subject to considerable doubt because of problems with the data but not really disproven either. We simply haven’t had a period of low solar activity in the modern instrumental era, just as we haven’t experienced MUCH of the available phase space of climate drivers in the modern instrumental era, and I at least do not trust global data from before the 60’s or 70’s at the earliest (the satellite era). Arguably we have lousy data on 70% of the Earth’s surface before 2000, let alone 1979 — pre-ARGO.
The one thing that one can correctly state is that the next few years will be an “interesting” time for climate science. The notion that solar state is a primary climate controller will very likely get a serious test if predictions of low solar activity continuing over two or more future cycles prove correct (note the stacking up of the ifs and probabilities and assumptions). However, there is likely to be confounding variation in the highly multivariate inputs elsewhere that may muddy the issue — CO_2 is rising, and the GHE may partially cancel what would otherwise HAVE BEEN a strong fall in temperature. The global decadal oscillations alter the pattern of Hadley cell circulation and hence affect heat transport from the tropics to the poles — anything that concentrates heat near the tropics should tend to overall cool the planet because of the T^4 in the radiative loss equation. The ocean is a complex heat buffering and CO_2 buffering system that is still in the process of being understood and which can either prevent any rise or fall or can slow the time constants of the rise or fall (making that 0.9C over five or six years rather unlikely on this ground alone). The Chinese and Indians may perfect LFTR reactors, start converting to Thorium wholesale (as both countries have lots of it), and reduce particulate emissions/soot, which in turn could modulate arctic melt and (for that matter) alter the rate of CO_2 production significantly given that these are the two most populous countries in the world with almost 1/3 of its total population. Somebody could invent an inexpensive quick-charge storage battery (or other mechanism for storing power) with a significant fraction of the energy density of fuel oil or gasoline, enabling things like Solar to produce cheap(er) energy without the need for bridge generation when the sun does not shine, again permanently altering the economics of energy generation. A supervolcano could erupt or explode, making ALL of our assumptions of “all things being equal” moot. A completely unsuspected, highly nonlinear mechanism for feedback in the climate system could emerge that actually dominates all of the above, so that with the exception of Milankovitch geological timescale variability, the climate is always chaotic to an extent that exceeds the linear response of any of the primary drivers so that even though on short timescales it can look like CO_2 is a sole linear driver, chaotic oscillations can completely invert the climate in spite of it (as it in fact did, back in the Ordovician-Silurian and to lesser extent in many other glacial transitions along the way).
The secular trend for the planet Earth on geological time scales of a hundred million years is serious cooling:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png
Note well the O-S glacial period — the only ice age that is colder than the present, and one that occurred with CO_2 at 10 to 20 times the level it is today. Note the Eocene:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png
It seems almost certain that CO_2 is not the primary driver of all of these variations in climate, and that whatever IS the primary driver is quite inexorable. The current interglacial is a warm blip, literally, in the Pliestocene glaciation.
So sure, perhaps we are about to return to active glaciation. Perhaps not. Perhaps the sun is the primary driver, or a primary driver of the climate with nonlinearly amplified effects along multiple causal chains. Perhaps not. Perhaps CO_2 really can and will overwhelm all natural variation, given time. Perhaps not. Perhaps the climate sensitivity is large. Perhaps it is small. Perhaps feedback is positive, perhaps it is negative. Perhaps there are other, unknown drivers that dominate all the known drivers, at least when conditions are just right. Maybe not.
The best we can do now with only 34 or so years of halfway decent data on at most half of the globe (and even less halfway decent data that can finally, honestly be said to span the globe) is guess, and none of our guesses should be taken too seriously, including the one above.
rgb
The Pompous Git says: @ September 9, 2013 at 12:42 am
Hmmmm… maybe it’s time I rewrote this and brought it into the 21stC…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I only read the introduction so far but we look like we are on the same page. I prefer organic methods first and resort to chemicals if needed.
One comment. You use the word ‘sustainable’ This word like so many before it has been co-oped by the elite to mean something entirely different than what we think it means. I use the words good husbandry instead so my meaning is clear.
‘Sustainability’ now means moving humanity off the land and turning the land over to the Mega-Corporations.
History HACCP and the Food Safety Con-Job is a well researched true history of Modern Industrialization of Farming and well worth the read. HACCP International is a leading food science organisation specialising in the HACCP Food Safety Methodology and its application within the food and related non food industries. and The International HACCP Alliance was developed on March 25, 1994, to provide a uniform program to assure safer meat and poultry products and to provide the World Trade Organization (1995) and OIE and FAO of the United Nations with unified food regulations approved by the IPC. “It is housed within the Department of Animal Science at Texas A&M University.”
F. William Engdahl says WTO/HACCP rules put free-trade of agribusiness above national health concerns. “The IPC was created in 1987 to lobby for the GATT agriculture rules of WTO at the Uruguay GATT talks. The IPC demanded removal of ‘high tariff’ barriers in developing countries, remaining silent on the massive government subsidy to agribusiness in the USA…. The IPC is controlled by US-based agribusiness giants which benefit from the rules they drafted for WTO trade…” John Munsell, Manager, Foundation for Accountability in Regulatory Enforcement also writes about HACCP’S Disconnect From Public Health Concerns These new international regulations have nothing to do with making food safe. They are about forcing family farmers off the land CHEAPLY via fines, bankruptcy and government confiscation. As world population expands, the demand for arable land should soar. At least that’s what George Soros, Lord Rothschild, and other investors believe. The elite are not about to allow family farmers to cash in on the next big boom cycle. We already know that regulations are preferentially enforced thanks to the ‘regulatory capture’ and The Revolving Door Between Gov’t And Big Business
Sustainability and ‘Smart Growth’ are code words for Agenda 21. This is the UN’s position on Land Use Control
You can see the implementation here: Green Practices/Sustainability: Apartments are the core of any sustainability strategy…. the NMHC Sustainability Committee, the Council is advancing industry best practices; working with lawmakers to adopt voluntary and incentive-based energy policy; and developing and promoting standards to help firms market their sustainability quotient.
THIS is the real definition of ‘SUSTAINABILITY’
You can see it at work in the European Union.
“SOUNDS LIKE SCIENCE FICTION…OR SOME CONSPIRACY THEORY…BUT IT ISN’T.
UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development is the action plan implemented worldwide to inventory and control all land, all water, all minerals, all plants, all animals, all construction, all means of production, all energy, all education, all information, and all human beings in the world. INVENTORY AND CONTROL.”—- Rosa Koire DEMOCRATS AGAINST U. N. AGENDA 21
This is the true threat to our food supply especially with the attitude expressed by the financiers:
And the grain traders
rg batduke,
You are in denial of the climatic response to the last two prolonged solar minimum periods,(Maunder Minimum /Dalton Minimum) and do not accept the concept of thresholds, which require a certain degree of magnitude change and duration of time change in the state of solar activity in order for it to exert an influence on the climate.
The period from 1844-2005 should have shown weak to no solar/climate correlations due to the fact solar activity through out that time was in a steady regular 11 year strong sunspot cycle with peaks and lulls which would masked any potential solar/climate correlations.
To clarify there is not one prolonged solar minimum period during that time frame following several years of sub-solar activity in general , to refer to ,to see if prolonged solar minimum conditions do or do not exert an influence on the climate directly and thru secondary means.
In addition I would like alternative explanations to account for the many past abrupt climatic changes(such as all 3 of the Younger Dryas events) the earth has undergone in the past.
AGW theory has already been proven to be incorrect to those of us who know better and have looked into the many predictions it has made which are wrong.
The models have predicted the basic atmospheric circulation(more of a +ao reality more of a -ao) and atmospheric temperature profiles wrong(lower tropospheric hot spot reality no hot spot )therefore it is not at all surprising the climate forecast are wrong. Not to forget co2 concentrations are a response to temperature change ,they do not lead the temperature change.
Run out of food? This is even more unlikely than running out of oil, IMHO. One of our major crops is corn. We have so much of it that we use it to mostly produce fatty meat, fuel for our cars, and high fructose corn syrup. Many, even here on the forum, think that we could do with significantly less of all three of these. We have such an overcapacity in food production that it makes me shake my head to hear anyone talk about running out of food.
David Archibald says:
September 9, 2013 at 1:54 am
John Day says:
September 8, 2013 at 8:19 pm
……..
Now you mention Dr Svalgaard, in fact you may be Dr Svalgaard. Dr Svalgaard has stated something, but it is not that the Sun affects the Earth’s climate. What does the Bible say? The Bible says “There are none so blind as those who will not see.” By regurgitating the purported views of Dr Svalgaard, you have made yourself a discredited element, to quote Marxist lexicology.
—————————————————————————————————————-
Well spotted David. The acerbic style of Mr John Day certainly is very characteristic of his doppleganger particularly in his subsequent response to your comments.!
rgb your post earlier sep .08 10:24 am was quite good, I should have not addressed my commentary to you, but made it in general.
Your post was balanced , I should have read it closer the first time.
@FrankK
> Well spotted David. The acerbic style of Mr John Day
> certainly is very characteristic of his doppleganger…
And perhaps you are Archibald, masquerading as “FrankK”. That’s doppelgänger, with an umlaut, BTW.
😐
Kermit says:
September 9, 2013 at 8:59 am
Run out of food? This is even more unlikely than running out of oil, IMHO. One of our major crops is corn. We have so much of it that we use it to mostly produce fatty meat, fuel for our cars, and high fructose corn syrup….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
We are capable of producing food but the Mega-corporations are now looking at food as the next big boom. I went into the details in a post that is now hung in moderations so I am not going to go into it again. I do not agree with all that is in this article but it does outline most of what I said in my comment that got booted into a black hole.
Undermining Abundance: The Big Business of Creating Scarcity
Here is information to back up what is said in that article. History HACCP and the Food Safety Con-Job is a well researched history of Modern Industrialization of Farming and well worth the read. HACCP International is a leading food science organisation specialising in the HACCP Food Safety Methodology and its application within the food and related non food industries. and The International HACCP Alliance was developed on March 25, 1994, to provide a uniform program to assure safer meat and poultry products and to provide the World Trade Organization (1995) and OIE and FAO of the United Nations with unified food regulations approved by the IPC. “It is housed within the Department of Animal Science at Texas A&M University.”
F. William Engdahl says WTO/HACCP rules put free-trade of agribusiness above national health concerns. “The IPC was created in 1987 to lobby for the GATT agriculture rules of WTO at the Uruguay GATT talks. The IPC demanded removal of ‘high tariff’ barriers in developing countries, remaining silent on the massive government subsidy to agribusiness in the USA…. The IPC is controlled by US-based agribusiness giants which benefit from the rules they drafted for WTO trade…” John Munsell, Manager, Foundation for Accountability in Regulatory Enforcement also writes about HACCP’S Disconnect From Public Health Concerns These new international regulations have nothing to do with making food safe. They are about forcing family farmers off the land CHEAPLY via fines, bankruptcy and government confiscation. As world population expands, the demand for arable land should soar. At least that’s what George Soros, Lord Rothschild, and other investors believe. The elite are not about to allow family farmers to cash in on the next big boom cycle. We already know that regulations are preferentially enforced thanks to the ‘regulatory capture’ and The Revolving Door Between Gov’t And Big Business
Great post David!
I repeat here two important points of your comments that I totally agree with,
David Archibald says:
”… The Sun controls climate and all we have to do is figure out what the Sun is going to do.”
and
” … What I like about the 1974 CIA report is that they state what has been forgotten – “the Earth has , on the average, enjoyed the best agricultural climate since the eleventh century.” What humanity has enjoyed for the last 100 years is a once in a thousand years event. It is not the normal condition. We are returning to the normal condition. The question is – what will it be like? That is what this post is about. Quantifying the fall and its consequences…”
In fact the “normal condition” is that Earth’s temperatures have been steadily falling in the last 2000 years,
http://iceagenow.info/2013/05/contrary-leader%E2%80%99s-assertions-earth-cooling-2000-years/
probably signaling the end of the present Interglacial.
rgbatduke says:
“I’ll join in. It is just as big a mistake to make to assume that the Earth is a one-knob climate system where that knob is (through a causal chain that has not yet been quantitatively, predictively, verified) the sun as it is to assume that the Earth is a one-knob climate system where that knob is (through a causal chain of complex feedbacks that have not yet been quantitatively, predictively, verified) CO_2 concentration in the atmosphere. Indeed, they both could be important knobs. So could other factors we might be including wrong in current oversimplified models or might be neglecting altogether.”
I find that you are thoroughly missing the point. What matters here is simply how deep and for how many weeks or months that the Arctic Oscillation goes negative, and it is very much a one nob system, and is directly predictable from the solar signal. A global temperature measure is irrelevant as it is more likely to go up during the serious cold shots because of ENSO. As for CO2, it didn’t do much to mitigate the Maunder type land temperatures we have already experienced in December 2010, February 2012, and March 2013.
David Archibald says:
September 8, 2013 at 4:16 pm
David, I quoted the data, and gave the reference for my claim. Don’t like the data? Go complain to the FAO.
You don’t like my transparency, I guess … since so far you haven’t had the balls to do the same regarding your claims, to publish your data and the references.
w.
Wesley Bruce says:
September 8, 2013 at 7:52 pm
I’m sorry, Wesley, but no, it’s not “good work”, Whether he is right or wrong, until he publishes his data and code, it’s just more crappy unsupported anecdotes given to try to increase alarm.
Unsupported alarmism is not somehow magically acceptable when skeptics do it—it’s wrong when anyone does it.
w.
The Pompous Git says:
September 8, 2013 at 10:06 pm
Unfortunately, your recollection is wrong. And not just a little bit wrong. Completely the reverse of the truth wrong. The wheat exports from the USSR peaked in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
Git, I gave you the dang link to the FAO data above. Here it is again. USE IT TO AVOID FUTURE EMBARRASSMENT!!!
Folks, people around here could care less about what you “seem to recall”, and if you try what the Git just tried, you’ll get slapped down too. I’m sick and tired of doing other people’s homework, but I will continue to do so, and to call out nonsense when it appears.
w.
Gail Combs said @ September 9, 2013 at 8:08 am
Way back when, we chose the word sustainable because it captured the idea of farming for the long term as distinct from agricultural methods that had led to such severe land degradation that farming was no longer possible. It was also a term that encompassed a variety of methods; it didn’t preclude the sensible use of agricultural chemicals. There is no synonym that quite captures the definition: “pertaining to a system that maintains its own viability by using techniques that allow for continual reuse”. “Low input sustainable agriculture” (LISA) is rather easier on the tongue than “Low input agriculture that maintains its own viability by using techniques that allow for continual reuse” (LIATMIOVBUTTAFCR).
Yes, the word has been hijacked, but the megacorporations are decidedly not farming sustainably. Here in Australia we had wheat growers losing 5kg of topsoil for each 1kg of wheat. I’d hope that is no longer the case.
I will post the book on my blog sometime in the next day, or two. I’d like your input prior to the rewrite.
/1/ During the Maunder minimum the “solar activity” (SA) was very low and so were the temperatures (LIA).
/2/ During the Dalton minimum similarly, but with a little lower “intensity” (temperature anomalies were not so negative as during the Maunder period).
/3/ At the beginning of the XX century, the SA was again low but not so much as during the Dalton period, and the anomalies went negative again, although not so pronouncedly as 100 years before.
/4/ During the late 1960’s and 1970’s we had solar cycle 20, which was relatively low, in comparison with previous cycles since the 1920’s and future cycles up to and including cycle 23 that ended in 2008.
Again temperatures went down to negative anomalies in this period, but not so strongly as at the beginning of the century.
/5/ Now, we have entered another phase of very low SA since 2008, and the temperatures have been falling steadily since a little prior to that minimum, with the exception of the El Nino year of 2010, as a plot of average linear trend of temperatures since 2001 readily shows
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/rss/from:2001/plot/rss/from:2001/trend
The Arctic icecap is showing signs of important recovery this year, and last summer was the coldest since 1958 in the Arctic according to DMI,
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
The Antarctic icecap has had many repeated records of ice extent in recent years, more than the average trend of the last century.
Of the greatest winter snowfalls since the 1970’s, 80% happened after 2008.
The frequency of La Nina’s in comparison with El Nino’s has increased this century in comparison with the last part of the XX century, showing again a trend to cooler temperatures and climates.
/6/ etc.
All this observed phenomena show/indicate a direct connection between SA and global temperatures, but for some reason some solar scientists have the firm belief that SA and global temperatures are not connected.
I believe the opposite and the next few years should set this debate in one direction or the other very clearly, especially if the connection really exists. In fact. I think that the obvious cooling in the last 12 months already indicates what the present trend is.
I truly believe the “solar scientists” will be proven wrong because those, like David Archibald, who have been promoting the idea of the connection between SA and global temperatures and predicting the evolution of the climate based on that, have been systematically proven right.
Without an open mind is impossible to accept a new paradigm.
Gail Combs says:
September 8, 2013 at 11:27 pm
Nailed it? He makes the bald unsupported claim that there are only five Savoy Cabbage varieties left available for sale … and two minutes searching finds a single page with nine varieties of Savoy Cabbage for sale, and another page with another six varieties. There’s another variety here … we’re up to sixteen varieties, and I haven’t even gone to the real heirloom catalogues.
Do you guys really think no one is paying attention, and you can just make it up?
Look, loss of seed varieties is important. It is an issue that is definitely worth discussing. Monoculture has a lot of problems, and loss of genetic variety is certainly one of them.
But trying to establish that with bullshit numbers doesn’t help anyone. And cheering for someone’s bogus numbers is pathetic. Do your homework, folks.
w.
PS—Savoy cabbage is a terrible example for what you are trying to establish, because it was developed by cross-breeding in Germany in the 1600’s. So the varieties are all a modern development which could very likely be re-created, it’s not like we’re losing ancient seed varieties.
Of the five snowiest NH winters since 1966, four have occurred since 2008,
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Screen_shot_2013-05-30_at_9.42.56_AM.png
For all of you that believe that the secret to the earth’s temperature is “It’s the sun, stupid”, let me compare the sun to the furnace in a home.
What heats that home? Well, obviously, it’s the furnace, stupid.
BUT … if you think that the temperature of your house is determined by how much gas your furnace burns, you’re in for a big shock. Because if you look, you’ll see the furnace comes on, and it goes off … and the temperature of your house hardly changes at all.
Why?
Because IT’S THE THERMOSTAT, STUPID!!
So the mere fact that the sun is the source of the heat for the Earth, just as the furnace is the source of the heat for the house, does NOT mean that we can blithely assume that the Earth’s temperature will vary in step with the temperature of the sun when it goes up and down … any more than the house’s temperature varies in step with the furnace when it goes on and off.
w.
this from gail combs is real eye opener for me and very sad.http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/08/the-climate-grain-production-relationship-quantified/#comment-1412274
kind of makes me wonder what all the fuss about climate change is.its plainly obvious that the sheer greed of the supposed societal elite around the world will be the undoing of the planet,a long time before any change in climate.time to join UKIP i think
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 9, 2013 at 12:12 pm
Soviet wheat importation is an issue with which I’m personally familiar.
A distinction should be made between exports of food grain & imports of feed grain. The USSR under Khrushchev decided to try to improve its subject peoples’ diets. He had been impressed with US cornfields on his trip here, & idiotically thought he could reproduce American farming success in a communist dictatorship.
The event below & other early ’60s food riots in the USSR led the Politburo to start importing wheat in 1963, a huge embarrassment for the largest nation, which had traditionally been a big grain exporter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novocherkassk_massacre
http://scholarsarchive.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/4377/SR%20no.%20314_ocr.pdf?sequence=1
“The 1960’s began and ended with record stocks of wheat located in major
producing and exporting countries. The resultant depressing effects on
international wheat markets were not present throughout the decade, however.
The Soviet Union became a major net importer in 1963; this development began
to diminish world wheat stocks. Then in 1965-1966 drought reduced food grain
production in broad areas of Asia and hiked wheat shipments, particularly to
India. The world food problem became such a critical concern that the President
of the United States called for a comprehensive study by his Science
Advisory Committee. The pessimism about the world food situation soon turned
to guarded optimism in the late 1960’s as the benefits of agronomic research
initiated years earlier began to emerge. These benefits appeared dramatically
in the form of new rice and wheat varieties that triggered opportunities
for greatly improved yields. To a significant extent, these opportunities
are being realized in Asia. Along with higher wheat production in most
developed countries — both exporting countries and importing countries in
Western Europe — the international wheat markets returned to a position of
excess supply similar to when the decade began.”
However, after the failure of Khrushchev’s hare-brained schemes, the USSR continued starving its own people to send grain to client states until the early ’70s. Brezhnev then decided to import food as well as feed grains.
http://www.nass.usda.gov/Education_and_Outreach/Reports,_Presentations_and_Conferences/Yield_Reports/Grain%20Production%20in%20the%20USSR%20Present%20Situation,%20Perspectives%20for%20Development%20and%20Methods%20for%20Prediction.pdf
From above 1981 study:
“Average yearly grain production in the USSR during the past five years,
as mentioned above, was approximately 205 million tons. Thus, considering
only recent years, the USSR has had an average shortage of grain of about
60 million tons per year. But the gap between the production of grain and
the demand for it widens in years with unfavorable weather conditions. In
the past five years such conditions occurred three times. The shortages of
grain in these three years in the USSR totaled around 230 million tons or 76
million tons per year. That was 50% higher than average for 1976-1980. And
even in years with favorable weather conditions (1976, 1978) grain production
in the USSR was 25-40 million tons lower than Soviet needs for grain.”
Despite the US embargo in 1984, the USSR continued importing grain right up to the end in 1991. Since then, its agricultural economy has benefited from capitalism & greatly revived.
Willis Eschenbach said @ September 9, 2013 at 12:12 pm
There were massive grain crop failures in the USSR in the 60s and 70s:
Severe crop failures occurred in 1963, 1965, 1972, & 1975. Perhaps the FAO failed to notice.
Willis Eschenbach said @ September 9, 2013 at 12:33 pm
Just because you can find a webpage stating that certain varieties of seed are available, does not necessarily translate into genuine availability. Year before last I rather foolishly purchased two packs of Paleface cauliflower from one of those “heirloom” seed suppliers when my regular supplier stopped stocking. None of those seeds, (0.00%) germinated. Not the first time this has happened! The other problem I have had with these small seed suppliers was that the seeds supplied were not of the varieties named.
New Gippsland Seeds stock Vertus and Savoy Ace. They no longer stock Carters Improved. From other reputable suppliers I can purchase Savoy King and Neptune. If you know of an Australian supplier of Carters Improved please let me know. I’ve been trying to find one for well over a decade.
John Day says:
September 9, 2013 at 9:27 am
@FrankK
> Well spotted David. The acerbic style of Mr John Day
> certainly is very characteristic of his doppleganger…
And perhaps you are Archibald, masquerading as “FrankK”. That’s doppelgänger, with an umlaut, BTW.
😐
———————————————————————————————————–
Thanks Leif you have just confirmed your identity cover.
You haven’t caught up yet Leif Germany are about to or are deleting the umlaut. (lol)
Cheers. ;-
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 8, 2013 at 10:24 am
I’m gonna have to protest this one:
A return to the climatic conditions of the Dalton Minimum is likely to take Russia, Kazakhstan and the European Union out of the export market.
You repeat the error of the climate alarmists, who claim that a rise of a few degrees will be catastrophic. While a fall of a few degrees is definitely something to be concerned with, I don’t think that farmers are as foolish as you seem to assume they are. If the growing season gets shorter, they will switch to shorter season crops, including short-season corn.
You might be interested in running a search on the terms “Famine Steppe” or “Hungry Steppe.” You’ll find a good many mentions of Kazakhstan. The problem isn’t the farmers’ adaptability but that of their external markets. The steppes are Russia’s bread basket and less bread means less kvas, and less kvas means crankier Russians. It has also been pointed out that there is a correlation between the great movements out of Central Asia and deteriorating, as in chilling, climate conditions. Look for “Climate and the Affairs of Men” by Iben Browning. He was an early adopter in the Climate Alarmist movement, but he felt we ought to be worrying about a colder climate rather than a hotter one. It is worth a read at least for the entertainment value alone.
Willis Eschenbach says: @ September 9, 2013 at 12:33 pm
Willis, I am very careful to provide links for what I write. If you look at what I posted at in this comment I list the history of the ‘Capture’ of seed selling. At one point the EU even had a link up about the ‘OFFICAL LIST’
December 2006 – “In the EU, there is now a list of ‘official’ vegetable varieties. Seed that is not on the list cannot be ‘sold’ to the ‘public’ To keep something on the list costs thousands of pounds each year…Hundreds of thousands of old heirloom varieties (the results of about eleven thousand years of plant breeding by our ancestors) are being lost forever.” http://www.defra.gov.uk/planth/pvs/pbr/app-procedure.htm & http://www.realseeds.co.uk/terms.html & http://www.euroseeds.org/pdf/ESA_03.0050.1.pdf”
In seed saving circles there was a big hoopla about this. It included a Agri-Business ‘Spy’ becoming a officer in a seed saving club and ‘Stealing’ the genetics. Seed Savers Exchange: The (New) Real Story Including Intrigue, Deception & the Doomsday Vault- Excerpt of A Letter from It’s Founder
The Git may not have given references to support his statements but I certainly did as I always do.
Willis Eschenbach said @ September 9, 2013 at 12:33 pm
Adressing the last part of your response Willis
I’m not really all that interested in trying to recreate old varieties; it’s a rather tedious process entailing growing at least a dozen of each of two varieties you want to cross and ensuring that they are isolated from being pollinated by insects from outside the crop. The insects that do the pollinating are usually flies from a piece of flyblown meat in the enclosure. What I want are savoys that cut in the winter here in southern Tasmania and those varieties are increasingly difficult to obtain. I have kept my seed catalogues from the early 80s and the only crop to maintain variety is tomatoes.
milodonharlani says: @ September 9, 2013 at 1:39 pm
Yes and it was Cargill that was exporting US wheat to the USSR. Cargill is a privately owned corporation so was ‘invisible’
Cargill wasn’t the only US based grain dealer selling to the Soviet Union.
Worth a read on this topic of grain production in the 60s and 70s is Hubert Lamb’s The Impact of Climate on History, in particular pp 275-290 in the edition I have (2nd Ed. Routledge 1995). Interestingly he credits the FAO as the data source from which he draws a different conclusion to Willis. So it goes…
Willis Eschenbach @ September 9, 2013 at 12:33 pm
….Do you guys really think no one is paying attention, and you can just make it up?
Look, loss of seed varieties is important. It is an issue that is definitely worth discussing. Monoculture has a lot of problems, and loss of genetic variety is certainly one of them.
But trying to establish that with bullshit numbers doesn’t help anyone…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I support what I write. You did not bother to read the rest of what I wrote which shows the history of seed saving regulation. The EU even went so far as to BAN “UNOFFICIAL VARIETIES”
December 2006 – “In the EU, there is now a list of ‘official’ vegetable varieties. Seed that is not on the list cannot be ‘sold’ to the ‘public’ To keep something on the list costs thousands of pounds each year…Hundreds of thousands of old heirloom varieties (the results of about eleven thousand years of plant breeding by our ancestors) are being lost forever.” http://www.defra.gov.uk/planth/pvs/pbr/app-procedure.htm & http://www.realseeds.co.uk/terms.html & http://www.euroseeds.org/pdf/ESA_03.0050.1.pdf”
Unfortunately these are old links.
The Ag Cartel even inserted a ‘Spy’ in a seed club to steal the genetic so they could patent them. Seed Savers Exchange: The (New) Real Story Including Intrigue, Deception & the Doomsday Vault- Excerpt of A Letter from It’s Founder
Mexico, cradle of corn, finds its noble grain under assault So corn too is losing its genetic diversity.
rgbatduke says:
September 9, 2013 at 8:01 am
Yes, the timing of the fall in temperature under Friis-Christensen and Lassen theory is a subject of ongoing interest. Let’s see what the warmers say:http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/08/13/when-will-it-start-cooling/
On the bigger picture, you have the capacity to weight the evidence and determine where truth lies. Science has been corrupted and your nation is under attack from green zealots. Be aware of what Dante said: The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/sep/09/physicists-claim-further-evidence-of-link-between-cosmic-rays-and-cloud-formation
george e. smith says:
September 8, 2013 at 4:34 pm
“Henry, Nothing you wrote has anything to do with the fact that the annual cycle in TSI, due simply to the variation in the sun earth distance, should have an amplitude that is proportional to the mean TSI value, which is only 0.1% different between the 1850-1910 period, and the modern warm period, yet the graph shows much more amplitude difference than that; maybe 50 times as much amplitude difference.”
There is no annual cycle of Earth’s orbit around the sun depicted on a plot on this scale.
Archibald’s figure 4 is plotting a period of a bit more than 400 years. The entire plot, including text labels on the right, is 641 pixels wide. A year on the plot would correspond to around 1 pixel width. That’s like or less than the width of a single tiny dot on your computer screen, like the period after this: .
You can’t and should not expect to visibly see annual cycles within the width of | or . on a screen or plot.
In other words, no annual cycle is depicted in the plot. In fact, it quite likely may be using annual-average data as in plotting each year as a single datapoint. (For a graph like this on the scale of plotting several hundred years, annual average data would be about suitable, since variation down to the second, minute, day, or month would be practically irrelevant in context except as a component of a larger average).
“the graph shows much more amplitude difference than that; maybe 50 times as much amplitude difference”
If you’re saying 50 times as much as 0.1% amplitude difference, you would be saying 5% amplitude difference, which would be like ranging from 1366 W/m^2 to 1298 W/m^2, which is way, way, way beyond the scale of the plot and not what it depicts.
If you’re referring to temperature, as an example, a degree Celsius variation in Earth’s temperature is about a 0.3% variation in average terrestrial temperature relative to absolute zero, where 0 degrees Celsius is 273 K (or, more precisely, 273.15 K), while 15 degrees Celsius is 288 K, and so on.
You are in denial of the climatic response to the last two prolonged solar minimum periods,(Maunder Minimum /Dalton Minimum) and do not accept the concept of thresholds, which require a certain degree of magnitude change and duration of time change in the state of solar activity in order for it to exert an influence on the climate.
The period from 1844-2005 should have shown weak to no solar/climate correlations due to the fact solar activity through out that time was in a steady regular 11 year strong sunspot cycle with peaks and lulls which would masked any potential solar/climate correlations.
Not at all. I just don’t consider correlation to be adequate proof of causality, and don’t think we know enough to be able to predict the climate cycle. I especially doubt that the climate is a one-trick pony, slaved to solar magnetic activity to the exclusion of all else, any more than I think it is a one-trick pony slaved to CO_2.
As I said, if the sun does enter a prolonged period of comparative inactivity with extended, weak solar cycles, then no matter what the climate does it will be very useful data for those seeking not to assert certain knowledge that they do not, in fact, possess but to determine what the correct theory is by building constructive, physics-based theories that explain the data as the climate moves through something more than a monotonic behavior of irregular warming, which is pretty much all that has persisted for the last 30 to 40 years (as it did for the similar length period at the beginning of the 20th century from roughly 1910 to 1950).
As far as I know, there is no convincing evidence that the climate over the last 2000 years was modulated by solar magnetic activity, and we lack direct observational evidence in the form of sunspot counts to extend the Maunder Minimum assertion back to earlier periods of cooling. The Little Ice Age was unique in the Holocene, the coldest stretch in 12000 years (post Younger Dryas) but the temperature OF the Holocene has been gradually diminishing post the Holocene Optimum and the current interglacial has already lasted as long as many of the last few interglacials. Remember, human civilization advanced from the hunter-gatherer state with no permanent cities all the way through to the modern present within the confines of the Holocene interglacial. There is no convincing evidence I’m aware of that solar magnetic activity had anything to do with the Younger Dryas itself, or the preceding Wisconsin glacial era, or the general pattern of temperature in the Pliestocene.
As far as the climate is concerned, we’re trying to extrapolate the shape of an elephant by carefully examining the tiny patch of skin we can see with remarkably good instrumentation, one perhaps a centimeter square. We see a zit and conclude that it is major feature on the elephant’s skin. With our dim, short-sighted eyes, we can make out a big, grey blur that could be the elephant’s ass or the back of its neck equally easily off in the distance. We cannot view the entire elephant in detail, not ever — most of it is completely invisible to us and will remain so forever, and we cannot explain its shape because other elephants, and other animals of similar sorts (e.g. other planets) are very distant indeed and don’t look much like our very own elephant. We can only wait for the one centimeter to become two, three, four as the flea of time on whose back we ride moves relentlessly along.
So sure, feel free to predict with any degree of certainty you wish to assert that CO_2 will have no effect, only beneficial effects, horrifically catastrophic effects, or will actually reduce temperatures beneficially or disastrously. I’ve heard it all asserted before on WUWT and other climate blogs. Climate science, for all of its complexity is without a doubt the most settled science in the world, for in no other discipline are there so many who are so certain of how the discipline’s science works where everybody disagrees as to just how it all works and where the best models of how it is SUPPOSED to work — suck.
I will cheerfully wait and see. It is quite plausible that SS24 and an even weaker SS25 will cause a reduction in average temperature, a resumption of glaciation (or a suspension of deglaciation), and a general cooling that could be mild or could be profound. It is quite plausible that EVEN with SS24 and 25 being unusually weak, the temperature might just remain roughly constant, resume warming, or even resume warming aggressively. We don’t, actually, have sufficient data or a reliable enough theory to make a prediction either way, and those who assert otherwise are indulging in a legal but somewhat unethical form of gambling. I’d be perfectly thrilled if my pockets are not picked EITHER by chicken little warmists who are CERTAIN that the sky is falling and sea level rising by meters or more OR by chicken little neo-coolists who are CERTAIN that the sky is falling and temperatures will soon follow, all the way to famine and disaster and drought. Sufficient unto the day the evil thereof, once the future itself makes that evil apparent not by prophecy, but by the mere passage of time.
Of course, where is the fun in that? There are huge payoffs for a prophet who lucks out and gets it right. And the great thing about climate prophecy is that it is all safely out there in the future, usually far enough off that falsification won’t occur in the lifetime of the prophet(s) themselves, and in the meantime one can ALWAYS cherrypick enough incidents to convince the credulous that your prophecy is correct. For example, we are about to have what may or may not turn out to be the latest first hurricane on record in what looks to be an entirely boring hurricane year. That hurricane is so far predicted to do “nothing interesting” out in the middle of the Atlantic before spinning out over cooler water, although there is always a chance for an unlikely track that might bring it near land eventually. We might literally have never noticed it and recorded it as a hurricane or tropical storm in the pre-satellite era. We are currently racking up the days in the longest stretch ever — eight years, this October — without a major atlantic hurricane making landfall in the US, and are getting out there where it is not entirely implausible that no hurricane at all will make landfall in the US this year, although there is still plenty of energy in the ocean and we haven’t completely flipped to fall cooling so anything is still possible.
But if a hurricane hits, major or not, you can be quite certain that it is in fulfillment of the CACC prophecy, and if a large one hits — as sooner or later, this year or another year one is bound to do eventually — the record setting drought of hurricanes will be instantly forgotten in the rush to blame the disaster not on the fact that hurricanes happen, but on human sin and gluttony.
rgb
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 8, 2013 at 3:59 pm
“The corn yield in Canada is 83,611 Hg/Ha, and that of the US is 77,442 Hg/Ha (source FAO).”
Canada produces a grand total of a bit less than 4% as much corn tonnage per year as the U.S., despite how Canada has slightly greater total land area than the U.S.
Corn is only grown at all in Canada presently in relatively exceptional locations, such as around the Great Lakes. The top 4% of corn growing locations in the U.S. would be way higher yield.
As a hectogram is 0.1 kg, a 77442 Hg/Ha figure for average U.S. corn yield would be saying it was only 7.74 metric tons per hectare. Some employee at the U.N. FAO may have put such down. However, that contrasts to how other sources show an U.S. average of 8.93 metric tons per hectare in 2003/2004 (and higher than Canada as shown at http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/agr_yie_cor-agriculture-yield-corn ), reaching 9.59 metric tons per hectare in 2010 ( http://www.ncga.com/upload/files/documents/pdf/2011_woc_metric.pdf ).
(Total production figures, for how Canada is a bit less than 4% as much as the U.S., are for 2013, from http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=ca&commodity=corn&graph=production and http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=us&commodity=corn&graph=production respectively).
The Archibald article’s Egypt prediction is inappropriately throwing out an unjustified number (and “carrying capacity” for dumb beasts doesn’t apply to humans in general, an environmentalist mindset fallacy — like rabbits can’t have nuclear-powered desalination plants irrigating deserts), but the overall aspect of colder weather and shorter growing seasons before frost meaning more trouble for the world’s agriculture on average (aside from additional technology/infrastructure advance or usage) is true.
Canada could probably, in the present climate, produce more than their current <=~ 4% of U.S. corn production if they heavily tried. But the cold does indeed not help them.
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 8, 2013 at 3:59 pm
“The wheat yield in the US is 31,140 Hg/Ha, and that of Ireland is 63,061 Hg/Ha.”
For a little perspective, here are figures for the example of California, a place where, somewhat like the tiny region of Ireland, land is relatively expensive so efficiency may be focused on:
“Average wheat yields for the state (2009-2012) were 2.5 tons/acre (~83 bushels) for common wheat and 3.2 tons/acre (106 bushels) for Durum wheat, according to USDA statistics. Yields of 4-5 tons/acre are not uncommon.”
(http://www.californiawheat.org/about/california-wheat/)
Note, for example, 3.2 tons an acre is a wheat yield of 7.9 tons per hectare. (If in doubt, just google: hectare acre conversion).
That would be 7900 kg/ha or, in hectogram terms, 79000 Hg/Ha.
Although, for example, Ireland examples can be more than countered by California ones as illustrated, total production is really more relevant than cherry-picking yields of small locales. There is always a huge range in farms, like the 6.3 tons/ha for within a small region of Ireland is blown away by an even smaller subset of a record 15.6 tons/ha yield farm in warm New Zealand.
In general, little of the world’s wheat today is produced by countries colder than China. For example, while Russia has 27 times the land area and multiple times the population of France, its total tonnage of wheat production in recent years has ranged from sometimes tens of percent more to sometimes even less ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_wheat_production_statistics ). Even within Russia, one would find less wheat production towards the coldest parts than where less far north.
Ireland doesn’t produce enough total tonnage of wheat to be even listed among the dozens of countries in the preceding table link, but basically they are next to nothing in total production compared to the U.S. 60 million tons/year, the Indian 90 million tons/year, and so on.
Gail Combs says:
September 9, 2013 at 3:30 pm
Many wheat ranchers believe that the USDA colludes with Cargill, et al to rip off farmers. My dad refused to provide the USDA surveys with any information, a practice I continued. When prices zoomed in the drought year of 1977, most farmers sold far too early & didn’t benefit.
On the bigger picture, you have the capacity to weight the evidence and determine where truth lies. Science has been corrupted and your nation is under attack from green zealots. Be aware of what Dante said: The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
Oh, please. Nobody has the capacity to determine where “truth lies” in climate science. I agree that the science has been corrupted, but that doesn’t mean that we know what is going to happen with regard to the climate. Even pretending that the science is UNcorrupted, the whole point of doing science is to figure out the truth, eventually. Not right this very instant, in the absence of anything like adequate data.
All we need is to replace religious zealotry on one side with equally religious zealotry on the other. Yeah, that’s a sure fire recipe for a rational society. Oh, and I really appreciate the implication that if I don’t agree with you or am unafraid to state that I don’t know what will happen — where I would assert that as a physicist who has studied this issue now for a fairly long time albeit as a hobby of sorts rather than a profession I expect that my guess would be better than your guess as a general rule — that I deserved to be cast into not only hell but the hottest place in hell. Wow. Talk about over the top polemic crap.
The truly sad thing is that one doesn’t need to prophecy a moderately implausible chilling future — down 0.9C by the end of SS24, really? — to be able to point out disaster from climate policy. That kind of thing only gets you laughed at because it is so far out there that even a serious skeptic such as myself has a hard time giving it — as you say — much weight in a sober appraisal of probable futures. Our current energy policies are killing people right now — no need to wait for a sudden drop into a little ice age or the next era of glaciation. Killing a rather lot of people, by perpetuating energy poverty.
You like global conspiracy theories, it is quite clear. I do too. I suspect that Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming is a “theory” that is pushed every bit as much by the energy companies as it is by the greens, and that if anything the poor green saps are playing right into the hands of the energy companies. Energy companies make a fixed margin on revenue, period. They simply set prices (and in effect, define the value of money as they do so). How, exactly, do higher prices and a completely artificial scarcity hurt them?
Oh, wait. They don’t. Energy companies have never been more profitable, with no end in sight. In the first world, we don’t care. We simply absorb the added cost with a bit of inflation, and continue living more or less the way we did before. In the third world, an artificial doubling of the cost of energy is — as you say — to truly be damned to the hottest part of hell, the only one that exists, hell on this earth trapped in an endless cycle of 18th century levels of poverty. So before damning me to hell, perhaps you might look at the hell that we are already in, the one that doesn’t actually rely much on the “certainty” of your predictions — I mean “prophecies” — of instant freeze (starting any year now, really, how can there be any honest doubt and if one disagrees, well, up against the wall with them come the revolution…).
rgb
rgb your post earlier sep .08 10:24 am was quite good, I should have not addressed my commentary to you, but made it in general.
Your post was balanced , I should have read it closer the first time.
Ah, well then, disregard my post in response to your post responding to my post that you didn’t really mean because you hadn’t really read my post. Or something like that;-)
As I said, it is quite plausible that there may be some cooling associated with multiple solar minima, especially Maunder type minima. It is also possible that there won’t be, because there is at the very least doubt as to whether even the Maunder minimum was truly a state of low solar magnetic activity, if I understand the evidence Leif fairly regularly presents. Also, correlation is not causality, and the causal link is still (IMO) hypothetical and plausible but not proven. The best that can be said is that it isn’t DISproven, either, and the best way to prove it (or not) is for the sun to ENTER a period of very low magnetic activity and see what happens to the climate and then try to understand it and see if — WITHOUT the confirmation bias, cherrypicking crap that attends climate science because everybody’s got a political agenda — it makes sense in terms of e.g. Svensmark’s physics based model. Or any of several other models that assert some sort of connection between magnetic field and atmospheric chemistry.
This is difficult stuff, and we just don’t have the data yet to resolve many of the questions. If it weren’t for a bunch of carefully organized political theater two plus decades ago that exploited a local run of twenty years of aggressive warming, plus the usual targeted funding bloat that occurs every few decades in science when something comes up that looks like there is money attached, I honestly don’t think that there would be much question of that. A lot of the climate scientists I’ve communicated with are a lot more “skeptical” than they let on in public because — as Climategate clearly exposed — there is a serious not-quite-conspiracy to suppress dissent and punish the dissenter, hardly a recipe for good science but a good way to ensure that the doubts of climate scientists never surface in the public eye. Climategate exposed that, too. There’s a lot more cynicism and doubt in its communications than you’ll find in AR3 or AR4, for example. And surprisingly little chatter actually DEFENDING THE SCIENCE. I was surprised, at least.
In the meantime, hands on pockets, and avoid precipitous and expensive decisions (especially ones that will have almost zero real impact) until the science has resolved somewhat. Which might take a decade, might take a century. I think we’ll know a lot more in twenty or thirty years, where sadly I will probably not get to see how it comes out (or else, not much care when it does). Unless, of course, the global average temperature drops 0.9 C by 2020. Or even 0.2 C (a lot more plausible). In that case I’m guessing there will be pitchforks and torches galore, even for people that don’t really deserve it.
And, of course, for a few that do.
rgb
There are a number of issues at play and I only disagree with the ‘degree’ of the issue in a couple aspects. Colder is drier for average precipitation in the Northern Prairies but in the recent cooling the net effect of more moisture storage at the agricultural belt immediately South of the Boreal Forest is a more productive biosphere and that doesn’t include elevated levels of CO2 as a fertilizer (I don’t subscribe to its model based properties). It has been absolutely explosive where I live with the recent cooling … I need a better chain saw and don’t fret about amphibians as much mowing the lawn. The agricultural zones in Canada are highly varied and within a couple of years varieties and acreage of different cereal, oil and other newer cultivated crops will adjust quicker than people think. There are also techniques like chemically ripening a crop now to facilitate more efficient harvesting strategies. The other issue is soot from China and the effect this has on snow cover and the change in seasons. Additionally, with the reduced Solar Activity coming, there is the Cosmic Ray cloud formation mechanism. So if you combine all these changes from experiences in previous ‘cold periods’, I think there will be a muted impact during this 30 years of misery coming to warmists, at least in Canada where ‘cold’, as in frozen, is just a fact of life and nothing we haven’t experienced before.
I plant my garden 2 weeks later than I did 20 years ago because the old practices once again have merit, but I have more to show for playing in the dirt.
@ Henry Clark
Your 15.6 tons/ha should be tonnes, rather than tons. That was a phenomenal crop and due at least in part to a nice hazy sky providing the diffuse sunlight that optimises photosynthesis.
In looking at these raw tonnages, it’s worth bearing in mind that there are two sorts of wheat: durum, or hard wheat that is used in bread and pasta, and soft, or feed wheat. The latter yields much higher.
At the time I wrote my little book back in the 90s, the high-yield wheat varieties were unavailable here in the land of Under. It kept the price of feed wheat excessively high.
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 9, 2013 at 1:02 pm
“So the mere fact that the sun is the source of the heat for the Earth, just as the furnace is the source of the heat for the house, does NOT mean that we can blithely assume that the Earth’s temperature will vary in step with the temperature of the sun when it goes up and down … any more than the house’s temperature varies in step with the furnace when it goes on and off.”
I don’t have to assume; I can look at actual data in http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif to see there (references given and in text form too if requested) that the rate of change of sea level, humidity at appropriate altitude, cloud cover, glacial extent, and temperature varies largely in step with solar-GCR forcing, when viewed on a timescale mostly averaging out the ENSO oscillation, aside from some contribution from other factors (including some lag not averaged out, the 60-year ocean oscillation, etc).
Like the furnace heating a house, there is a partial lag effect. Some temperature rise occurs after X time; some more after Y time. (You saw that and more, in a different context, with a volcano article you published a while ago ago). Turning a furnace to max certainly doesn’t result in a house’s temperature instantly going to max. And it doesn’t with ocean waters 10 meters down, let alone 1000+ meters down, either. But what can be seen, despite all that, is major in context.
Usually the strategy used in trying to claim solar variation lacks effect is to try to restrict the discussion to a tiny slice of data, such as CAGW-movement fudged data rather than that in the previous link. As an analogy, using approximately the same method, someone could argue quite effectively, to a hypothetical person with no background knowledge, even as high an absurdity as that the Allies were worse than the Axis side in WWII, by the simple exercise of focusing on the actions of a couple cherry-picked squads of soldiers while ignoring all the other historical data. Yet even the preceding link, although one image (enlarging on further click), contains enough to break down that strategy, and no anti-sun arguing poster here has ever shown any evidence of clicking on it.
rgbatduke says:
September 9, 2013 at 8:08 pm
My apologies. The correct quote would say “the darkest recesses of hell”, not “the hottest recesses”. So it is the darkest recesses that you are off to.
The Pompous Git:
True. I wrote “metric ton” early in the post, then stopped repeating it each time later. While my comparisons are meant to be more general than dependent on the exactness of that distinction anyway (of a 907 kg ton versus a 1000 kg metric ton or tonne), indeed I think that figure probably was reported in tonnes.
Archibald, even as someone with major points of partial agreement, your last post is rather too rude (and counterproductive for convincing). Not that I’m a mod.
My apologies. The correct quote would say “the darkest recesses of hell”, not “the hottest recesses”. So it is the darkest recesses that you are off to.
Well, at least you have a sense of humor, that’s something.
rgb
Hoisting (blowing up) the Alarmists by their own petard (satchel charge). What fun!
Archibald, even as someone with major points of partial agreement, your last post is rather too rude (and counterproductive for convincing). Not that I’m a mod.
Aw, I don’t mind. He’s all passionate and everything, full of self-righteous indignation in the way only somebody who is certain they are correct can be.
Sadly, I fail to achieve that degree of certainty very often. Well, maybe in my degree of belief in gravity, stuff like that. But sure as hell not in the unholy mess of post hoc ergo propter hoc and ceteris paribus and other latin words meaning “logical nonsense” that is modern climate science. I do admire a man who can just look at some data and intuitively solve a pair of globe spanning, coupled Navier-Stokes equations on the spinning non-inertial reference upon which we reside, while careening around a 6000 K hot object a million and a half kilometers across in an elliptical orbit sufficiently eccentric that it causes TOA insolation to vary by 92 Watts/m^2 from apogee to perigee, with a highly variable and poorly understood system of heat transport and variable albedo, for decades into the future! Wow! Good job! You go, guy! Who needs supercomputers, or a physical model — you’ve got Friis-Christensen and Lassen!
And now, it is time to slink of to my dark hel– I mean “bed”, so I can suffer from the simultaneous nightmares of burning in CAGW hell and freezing in CSGC (catastrophic solar global cooling) at the same time!
Frost had it wrong — the end of the world isn’t about fire vs ice. Self-righteous certainty, cognitive dissonance, religious belief — those will do the job nicely even if the climate remains perfectly comfortable for most people for the rest of the century either way.
rgb
Henry Clark says:
September 9, 2013 at 8:59 pm
The Allies were worse than the Germans, soldier for soldier, unit for unit & formation for formation in WWII ground combat effectiveness, in both attack & defense, line & elite troops. Early in the war, the Japanese were also better, but that changed quite rapidly (Guadalcanal). The Italians, not so much, except for some elite units. The US & British Commonwealth fared better against the Wehrmacht than did the Russians, even after Stalingrad & Kursk, when their performance greatly improved.
However the best Allied defensive operation was probably Kursk, aided by western Allies’ landing on Sicily, & offensive Operation Bagration, the Soviet advance into Belarus & eastern Poland, timed to follow D-Day in the West & beefed up by Lend Lease equipment & supplies, critically US trucks.
The Allies won by weight of numbers of men & tons of materiel on land, plus larger & eventually better navies & air forces (to include atomic bombers). The West was also aided by British intel ops & radar, German strategic blunders, many Hitler’s, & by out-dated Japanese tactics which worked in China but not against the ANZACs, USMC or Army from late 1942 onwards.
Not that any of these bears on your main point.
Milodonharlani:
I meant in terms of the moral/ethical aspect. I suppose my post wasn’t explicit there, although I just assumed that would be how it was interpreted.
For example, nobody tends to describe Blitzkrieg and the Wehrmacht as terrible in military tactics. Rather, superb or extremely competent would be a far more common descriptor (even though WWII Germany had some military mistakes, especially at the strategic level and especially later in the war, including, as you and countless historians have implied, how they got involved fighting the U.S.+USSR combo possessing far above Germany’s own industrial capabilities).
Meanwhile, many would describe the morality of the Holocaust, Einsatzgruppen, or far too much of what the IJA did as terrible.
That the Axis side was morally worse in actions and policies overall than the Allied side is something rarely disputed today (even though at the same time there are available examples of Allied actions far from saintly, like killings by the NKVD).
Of course, this is off-topic for the thread. Just I’m clarifying the earlier comment.
(And, if it is not clear, that is one topic where the majority opinion is the same one which I share).
Gail Combs says:
September 9, 2013 at 3:30 pm
Indeed you are, Gail, your comments are always solidly researched and backed up. My comments were not intended for you, sorry if there was some confusion.
w.
Henry Clark says:
September 9, 2013 at 8:59 pm
Thanks, Henry. I looked at the Holgate paper, the first of your references in your graphic. As you show in your graphic, it reveals an amazing correlation between sea level rise and solar activity.
Unfortunately, you have quite arbitrarily cherry-picked the Holgate data by cutting out more than half of it … the half which, by a strange coincidence, doesn’t show anything of the kind. It shows no correlation at all with the solar cycle. This kind of appearing-and-disappearing cycle is quite common in climate records.
What is less common is someone just cutting off the data that doesn’t fit their theory without comment or explanation … and when someone does that as you have done, Henry, I fear that I simply stop paying any attention to them. I don’t have time to screw around with data that’s been possibly tampered with, and you’ve conclusively proven that we can’t trust you not to tamper with the data.
w.
Understood Willis, I misinterpreted what you said.
This Koppen Map, first provided at WUWT by Pompous Git, gives a visual of how far south the plant hardiness zones move if the weather returns to the norm for the 1970’s. map
The problem as I see it is not so much the temperature as the possible blocking highs that go with a more meridional pattern of the jet stream. This will give blocks of rain/flooding, drought and freezing or very hot weather. These more irregular weather patterns are more of a headache for farmers (and plants) than just a shift to cooler weather.
***
rgbatduke says:
September 9, 2013 at 10:16 pm
Sadly, I fail to achieve that degree of certainty very often. Well, maybe in my degree of belief in gravity, stuff like that. But sure as hell not in the unholy mess of post hoc ergo propter hoc and ceteris paribus and other latin words meaning “logical nonsense” that is modern climate science. I do admire a man who can just look at some data and intuitively solve a pair of globe spanning, coupled Navier-Stokes equations on the spinning non-inertial reference upon which we reside, while careening around a 6000 K hot object a million and a half kilometers across in an elliptical orbit sufficiently eccentric that it causes TOA insolation to vary by 92 Watts/m^2 from apogee to perigee, with a highly variable and poorly understood system of heat transport and variable albedo, for decades into the future! Wow! Good job! You go, guy! Who needs supercomputers, or a physical model — you’ve got Friis-Christensen and Lassen!
***
Priceless…
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 10, 2013 at 3:11 am
“As you show in your graphic, it reveals an amazing correlation between sea level rise and solar activity.
Unfortunately, you have quite arbitrarily cherry-picked the Holgate data by cutting out more than half of it … the half which, by a strange coincidence, doesn’t show anything of the kind. It shows no correlation at all with the solar cycle.”
False.
Those sea level and humidity plots were aligned to start at the same year the oulu.fi neutron monitor data does, in 1964, the start year prominently labeled on the plots. In the early 20th century in contrast, the very existence of the neutron was not known yet, so naturally there were not neutron monitors then. Perhaps I could have added a note, though I didn’t think it was necessary, and you could have asked if you didn’t know that rather than being so rude.
Also it was a triple comparison of 3 plots with humidity as well; humidity data at altitude didn’t extend back to the early 20th century either, and the point was to have all 3 plots begin with the same start date so not misaligned for comparison. (Meanwhile, I already had, a bit beneath it, a separate comparison extending centuries back of cosmic rays by proxy to temperature and glacial extent).
It is possible to switch to a partial proxy, like sunspot count, to cover the era back to 1900 A.D. for sea level comparison. That has some weaknesses like, as one of many examples of divergence, by half-way through 1999, sunspots were near maximum values for that cycle whereas cosmic ray deflection did not approach such until well into the year 2000. (There are other examples of divergence, like two different times can both have nil sunspots but substantially different neutron monitor count data and thus cosmic ray forcing).
But, even for the more imperfect proxy of sunspots, even over the period back to 1900 A.D. start of the sea level data, correlation is shown, with your claim of it lacking correlation being very untrue, as illustrated in the following which includes highlighting of the 19 peaks and troughs corresponding in timing, with only *once* it showing much of a sea level rise dip not matching a solar downturn and that from other causes:
http://s8.postimg.org/q7pjwub4l/againillustrated.gif
And, once again, here are the couple dozen other plots you had to utterly ignore in order to make that claim:
http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif
Just a note to point out that despite several requests, to date David Archibald is continuing to follow the most despicable practice of the climate alarmists by flat out refusing to post his data and code.
Which I suppose is not surprising, as his post is long on alarmism (in the cooling direction) and woefully short on facts, observations, and references. I’d hesitate to show my work if that were the case …
What is surprising, however, is that he seems to think that the issue will go away if he says nothing.
David, this issue is fundamental to science, and it won’t disappear just because you ignore me. It’s time to put up or shut up, your endless waffling and overblown claims of certainty in a most uncertain field, with nothing to back them up but repetition and earnest sincerity, are getting quite boring.
I’m not saying you’re trying to scam people. It’s clear you honestly and fervently believe this stuff, David, but saying it over and over is not the way to convince scientists.
Scientists want data and code, and sorry, no substitutes accepted.
w.
I ponder the northern-most line of viable grain crop growing in Canada, and for every degree day, how far that line moves south and how many bushels/tons of crop that represents.
Henry Clark says:
September 10, 2013 at 9:17 am (Edit)
Sorry, but your justification for your cherry-picking doesn’t hold water. You claim a correlation between cosmic rays and sea level, but you didn’t use all of the available data. In another graphic just below that one you use Berggren’s ice core cosmic data, which runs from 1389–1994 AD … that covers the period you left out entirely.
The only possible conclusion is, you had the cosmic ray data to compare to all of the sea level records, and you chose to only compare it where it supports your claim, and not where it falsifies your claim.
And on this planet, that’s called “cherry picking”, and my rule is that when a man does that, I just let his work go. I don’t have time to fight my way through that kind of deceptive practice …
So you had the data. But heck, if you actually didn’t have the data, I’d have been satisfied if you’d just included the earlier half of the sea level data so people could make up their own minds … but that data has no obvious cycles at all.
From that graph, anyone can tell that your claim of some kind of tie between cosmic rays (which vary with the 11 year sunspot cycle) and sea level is total hogwash … which of course is why you cherry picked the data.
w.
In order to have a solar/climate connection show up the solar conditions have to vary by a certain degree of magnitude over a certain duration of time, anything short of that WILL NOT BE ENOUGH ,to show a solar /climate connection.
This is why it is hard to show solar/climate connections since the end of the Dalton , to very recently.
However the sun has gone into a prolonged solar minimum state which is turing out much WEAKER then the conventional forecast thus far ,and IS going to have an impact on the climate going forward if the prolonged solar minimum reaches the many solar parameters I have talked about.
solar flux sub 90 sustained.
solar wind sub350 km/sec. sustained.
UV light off upwards of 50% sustained.
cosmic ray count 6500 or more sustained.
solar irradiance off .015% or more sustained
ap index 5.0 or lower 98+% of the time sustained.
These solar values folowing several years of sub solar activity in general which we have had since year 2005.
That is the basic flaw in the reasoning of those who keep trying to say there are no solar/climate relationships.
Many are in denial of the climatic response to the last two prolonged solar minimum periods,(Maunder Minimum /Dalton Minimum) and do not accept the concept of thresholds, which require a certain degree of magnitude change and duration of time change in the state of solar activity in order for it to exert an influence on the climate.
The period from 1844-2005 should have shown weak to no solar/climate correlations due to the fact solar activity through out that time was in a steady regular 11 year strong sunspot cycle with peaks and lulls which would masked any potential solar/climate correlations.
To clarify there is not one prolonged solar minimum period during that time frame following several years of sub-solar activity in general , to refer to ,to see if prolonged solar minimum conditions do or do not exert an influence on the climate directly and thru secondary means.
The low solar activity associated with solar cycle 14 does not meet my criteria for a prolonged solar minmimum period following many years of sub-solar activity in general an thus a definitive solar/climate correlation.
rgbatduke says:
“As I said, if the sun does enter a prolonged period of comparative inactivity with extended, weak solar cycles, then no matter what the climate does it will be very useful data for those seeking not to assert certain knowledge that they do not, in fact, possess but to determine what the correct theory is by building constructive, physics-based theories that explain the data as the climate moves through something more than a monotonic behavior of irregular warming, which is pretty much all that has persisted for the last 30 to 40 years (as it did for the similar length period at the beginning of the 20th century from roughly 1910 to 1950).”
The weak solar cycle started late 2008, and we have had highly negative AO/NAO conditions and very low land temperature episodes already. It helps to keep up to date.
“As far as I know, there is no convincing evidence that the climate over the last 2000 years was modulated by solar magnetic activity, and we lack direct observational evidence in the form of sunspot counts to extend the Maunder Minimum assertion back to earlier periods of cooling.”
There are Aurora records, and reconstructions:
http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full/2007/19/aa6725-06/img81.gif
http://davidpratt.info/climate/clim9-10.jpg
“There is no convincing evidence I’m aware of that solar magnetic activity had anything to do with the Younger Dryas itself,”
Did you check google scholar?
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X03007015
“I especially doubt that the climate is a one-trick pony, slaved to solar magnetic activity to the exclusion of all else,”
There are always negative AO/NAO conditions when the solar plasma is slow:
http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-now.png
THer is much evidence that the Younger Dryas cold period was associated with low solar activity.
If you google that subject you will find many studies in support of this.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
“The low solar activity associated with solar cycle 14 does not meet my criteria for a prolonged solar minmimum period following many years of sub-solar activity in general an thus a definitive solar/climate correlation.”
1879-1909 wasn’t too different from Dalton, 1902 for example had the coldest summer for 500 years in mainland Europe.
Enter vertical gardening on a grand scale. All you need is energy. So as long as they don’t ban all affordable energy …. never mind 🙁
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 10, 2013 at 9:40 am
It is unbecoming to for a brave seafarer to throw a hissy fit. There was only one request (and I offered to email the file to you) and a couple of commands. You got cranky because I did not immediately jump to do your bidding? As they say, where is the magic word? Loosen the grip on yourself and get a grip on reality. Normally I wouldn’t bother replying to someone who immediately descends to talking about the size of genitalia, but I detect that there is some good in you and I am interested in the advancement of science. So I have emailed the file to Anthony. After apologising to Anthony for your language and demeanor, he might deign to send it to you if you express yourself civilly.
Have you been able to understand the whole Canada and corn thing yet? That corn is a heat-loving crop and Canada is a cold place and that they don’t generally go together? I don’t have time to help you myself but there is plenty of material online if you are still confused. I admire attempts at self-improvement through reading and good luck in finding out all about corn. It is an exciting subject!
@ Mike Silver
NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=1319
TRM said @ September 10, 2013 at 1:02 pm
Tosh! You also need nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulphur, manganese, iron, boron, copper, cobalt, zinc…
Despite Willis’ claim of 16 varieties of savoy, I have been able to ascertain the following:
Terra Nova 3 varieties, Fairbanks 0 varieties, South Pacific Seeds 1 variety, Seminis (Monsanto) 0 varieties and Syngenta 1 variety. Local rural suppliers Roberts and Hollanders almost confirm what I originally claimed: “less than 5 varieties”. Terra Nova have introduced a new variety and I was unaware of that. So it goes…
The weak solar cycle started late 2008, and we have had highly negative AO/NAO conditions and very low land temperature episodes already. It helps to keep up to date.
And you think something about this constitutes proof? Did nothing else change that could explain this?
It’s easy to be convinced if you want to believe something, isn’t it? Of course the change in phase of the PDO couldn’t have been relevant to any of this, and its period (fairly regular, actually) is OBVIOUSLY caused by the sun, which has an identical period, only not exactly, or maybe not at all.
Understand, I’m not saying you, or Salvatore, or anybody else that wants to claim that the sun is more important than existing climate models allow for is wrong. I’m saying that we have damn-all reliable data to support egregious assertions, a planetfull of possible confounding causality, and a very thin causal thread to hang “certainty” of a connection AT ALL upon. If you are really a skeptic, it helps to be skeptical of your own beliefs and biases as well as the claims of others.
rgb
rgbatduke says
“Of course the change in phase of the PDO couldn’t have been relevant to any of this..”
Of course not, it makes no sense and the correlation is abysmal.
“I’m saying that we have damn-all reliable data to support egregious assertions..”
More likely that you make egregious assertions that there is insufficient data, which is a bit ripe considering you have been presented with the best data immediately before. Don’t just pick the post 2008 cherry, look at the whole series, land temperatures in the temperate zone drop when it’s low, every time:
http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-now.png
“If you are really a skeptic, it helps to be skeptical of your own beliefs and biases as well as the claims of others.”
I have hunches and leads that either get proved or disproved. Beliefs and biases are not at all useful for scientific progress, neither is cynicism.
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 10, 2013 at 10:43 am
“Sorry, but your justification for your cherry-picking doesn’t hold water.”
You continue to ignore everything said beyond the first sentence of my replies as if you find the cognitive dissonance of viewing more inconvenient facts unpleasant (which should be a warning flag, as truth isn’t bothered by seeing additional info and doesn’t have the insecurity of trying to suppress such).
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 10, 2013 at 10:43 am
“You claim a correlation between cosmic rays and sea level, but you didn’t use all of the available data. In another graphic just below that one you use Berggren’s ice core cosmic data, which runs from 1389–1994 AD … that covers the period you left out entirely.”
A segment of a Breggen et al 2009 Be-10 reconstruction was plotted by Miyahara et al 2010 from 1610 to 1760 A.D. at a resolution fine enough for showing the temperature and humidity correlations then. The Miyahara paper plotting such is at http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/2011ScienceMeeting/docs/presentations/2k_Miyahara_SORCE_brief.pdf as noted in my image but does not cover up to 1994 at that resolution. (While the Usoskin page 5 plot extends further, it should be obvious such isn’t of remotely the same resolution and isn’t picking out 11-year cycles in a comparable manner, being rather about covering quite a number of centuries).
*IF* you have really found in googling a non-paywalled link for such at comparably fine/annual resolution up to 1994, provide it here now (so I can highlight further correlations), as it is not in the URL links in my image.
The plot of Be-10 (and C-14) over the past thousand years from Kirkby (again in my http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif image), quite well shows the relationship to temperature and glacial extent history but is not at a resolution scale fine enough for picking out ~ 11-year cycles within it (as is obvious).
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 10, 2013 at 10:43 am
“I’d have been satisfied if you’d just included the earlier half of the sea level data so people could make up their own minds … but that data has no obvious cycles at all.”
Claiming such has no cycles is untrue, as you already know from what was highlighted in http://s8.postimg.org/q7pjwub4l/againillustrated.gif but take the typical strategy of counting on readers not clicking to see for themselves; I’m disappointed that you resort to such as I hoped you might be a better person than that.
With no interest in learning, your post is just a transparent play to an audience, stepping away from everything inconvenient (even down to my debunking of your false implying of the cold of Canada being as good as or superior for corn growing as the U.S.), hoping that aggressive enough offensiveness, projection of dishonesty, and slander will make me go away. Sorry. I despise that.
As an addition to the main http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif image, prior posts noted http://s8.postimg.org/q7pjwub4l/againillustrated.gif as a secondary plot, showing sea level rise rate back to 1900. That had 9 peaks and 10 troughs in the 20th century corresponding to the 9 peaks and 10 troughs in sunspot count meanwhile (though with such as a merely imperfect partial proxy for cosmic rays as earlier noted), aside from how there was one extra bit of a sea rise trough around the end of WWII. It is looking like ENSO adjustment might eliminate the one and only superficially extra trough, the WWII double dip so to speak, but that is something I haven’t gotten around to illustrating yet.
(Note anti-sun dogma has to claim not only those correlations but also the ignored humidity, temperature, cloud cover, and glacial extent ones in http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif were all sheer coincidence, which speaks more about bias than about what an unbiased honest observer would guess as most probable when there is an excellent chain of physics to expect effect — as opposed to giving no explanation for events like the LIA or, in quantitative ludicrousness, blaming on the pre-industrial small human population of the time as the CAGW movement tries now).
However, in the meantime, there is another plot of simple data without any such adjustment to highlight too, as a good illustration actually is something Mr. Archibald found way back 4 years ago (— too bad it wasn’t in later posts):
“Anthony’s post of the Jason data reminded me that I had produced this graph:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/sea-level-rate-of-change-and-solar-cycles-510.jpg?w=640
It is derived from a post on Climate Audit of Holgate’s rate of change of sea level rise over the 20th century.
The saw tooth pattern reminded someone of the solar cycles and he overlaid it. I had the graph redrawn. The correlation is striking.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/07/archibald-on-sea-level-rise-and-solar-cycles/
It appears to be plotting sunspots, so one must note such can be off by a year or more in timing compared to cosmic ray peaks as earlier remarked, but it is pretty good in context.
As an addition to the main http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif image, prior posts noted http://s8.postimg.org/q7pjwub4l/againillustrated.gif as a secondary plot, showing sea level rise rate back to 1900. That had 9 peaks and 10 troughs in the 20th century corresponding to the 9 peaks and 10 troughs in sunspot count meanwhile (though with such as a merely imperfect partial proxy for cosmic rays as earlier noted), aside from how there was one extra bit of a sea rise trough around the end of WWII. It is looking like ENSO adjustment might eliminate the one and only superficially extra trough, the WWII double dip so to speak, but that is something I haven’t gotten around to illustrating yet.
(Note anti-sun dogma has to claim not only those correlations but also the ignored humidity, temperature, cloud cover, and glacial extent ones in http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif were all sheer coincidence, which speaks more about bias than about what an unbiased honest observer would guess as most probable when there is an excellent chain of physics to expect effect — as opposed to giving no explanation for events like the LIA or, in quantitative ludicrousness, blaming on the pre-industrial small human population of the time as the CAGW movement tries now).
However, in the meantime, there is another plot of simple data without any such adjustment to highlight too, as a good illustration actually is something Mr. Archibald found way back 4 years ago (— too bad it wasn’t in later posts):
[The] “post of the Jason data reminded me that I had produced this graph:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/sea-level-rate-of-change-and-solar-cycles-510.jpg?w=640
It is derived from a post on Climate Audit of Holgate’s rate of change of sea level rise over the 20th century.
The saw tooth pattern reminded someone of the solar cycles and he overlaid it. I had the graph redrawn. The correlation is striking.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/07/archibald-on-sea-level-rise-and-solar-cycles/
It appears to be plotting sunspots, so one must note such can be off by a year or more in timing compared to cosmic ray peaks as earlier remarked, but it is pretty good in context.
rgbatduke says:
“As far as the climate is concerned, we’re trying to extrapolate the shape of an elephant by carefully examining the tiny patch of skin we can see with remarkably good instrumentation, one perhaps a centimeter square. We see a zit and conclude that it is major feature on the elephant’s skin. With our dim, short-sighted eyes, we can make out a big, grey blur that could be the elephant’s ass or the back of its neck equally easily off in the distance. We cannot view the entire elephant in detail, not ever — most of it is completely invisible to us and will remain so forever, and we cannot explain its shape because other elephants, and other animals of similar sorts (e.g. other planets) are very distant indeed and don’t look much like our very own elephant. We can only wait for the one centimeter to become two, three, four as the flea of time on whose back we ride moves relentlessly along.”
True, if you only see the weather in your own village and ignore all the vast amount of surface and satellite data, but then it’s a pink elephant not a grey one.
“Oh, please. Nobody has the capacity to determine where “truth lies” in climate science.”
Solar based forecasts at the scale of weather can readily map the climate for decades ahead. Would you deny the use of such a essential tool because the mechanisms are not understood?
“..where I would assert that as a physicist who has studied this issue now for a fairly long time albeit as a hobby of sorts rather than a profession I expect that my guess would be better than your guess as a general rule —”
David has an estimate based on weaker solar activity, you have a blind guess (slight warming for the next two decades you said on an earlier post), which is completely in the wrong direction.
Thanks for another interesting and thought provoking contribution Mr. Archibald.
I do find amusing the response of certain of your critics that we’ve nothing to worry about because of hybrid genetics and unlikely volcanic activity versus the Dalton minimum given a drop in global average temperature of just 1.2 degrees F.
It would seem that your prediction accounts for those factors and predicts a fall in temperature more than double the rise experienced over the past century.
“And lean, ugly cows ate up the seven fat cows that came before them.” One will note that 1800 BC experienced a similar Solar decline.
Ulric,1879-1909 was lower then normal solar activity but it was not sustained enough in my opinion to be a true prolonged solar minimum, still it did have a climatic effect as you point out.
This current solar situation loooks to be evolving into a much more serious down turn in solar activity in contrast to the 1879-1909 time period in my opinion.
What we need going forward to see if solar/climate connections do exist is for the sun to slump into a very prolonged quiet period and see the climate reaction.
I am saying based on past history if the degree of solar quiet approaches the Dalton ,or better yet the Maunder Minimum conditions there will be a climatic impact.
What we have now is potentially the first true prolonged solar minimum since the Dalton ,and I think if this prolonged solar minimum (following several years of sub-solar activity in general,started in year 2005) meets it’s potential that the solar /climate correlations will start to manifest themselves in the climatic system of earth.
Those being in response to direct changes in solar parameters and the associated secondary effects to those earth originating climatic items that influence the climate of the earth through random changes, absent any extreme solar changes which I feel will exert an influence on those earth originating random earth climatic items.
Items, such as clouds, volcanic activity, enso etc. etc.
If(IF) the degree of magnitude change and duration of time of the solar changes meets certain criteria.
THOSE BEING AS FOLLOWS:
solar flux sub 90.
solar wind 350 km/sec.
cosmic ray count north of 6500 per minute.
ap index sub 5 ,98+% of time.
solar irradiance off .015% or more.
EUV light wavelengths 0-105nm, intensity of sub 100 or lower.
All of the above sustained. If these conditions are acomplished going forward I am of the strong opinion they will be exerting an ever increasing influence on the climate of the earth going forward both through the direct solar changes and the secondary effects from those direct solar changes.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
“Ulric,1879-1909 was lower then normal solar activity but it was not sustained enough in my opinion to be a true prolonged solar minimum, still it did have a climatic effect as you point out.
This current solar situation loooks to be evolving into a much more serious down turn in solar activity in contrast to the 1879-1909 time period in my opinion.”
As ever, it is the weather event periods that are critical, and particularly in which season they fall, as cold conditions through the growing seasons are potentially far more parlous than a very cold winter, which is what this topic is all about.
Now, there are two main factors, firstly is the 110.7yr (on average) cycle of solar minimum’s, of which solar cycles 12-14 were such an episode, and secondly, the short term heliocentric configurations that are responsible for the daily-weekly scale changes in AO/NAO etc. The effective heliocentric analogue for the short term is at 179.05 years back, which shows a very strong and long cluster of very cold events from 1836 to 1845: http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/tcet.dat
This was during a much stronger solar cycle: http://www.solen.info/solar/cycl8.html
Yet these short term events are occurring in a much weaker solar cycle this time, so would tend to be colder, as we have already seen in December 2010 and March 2013, and that is despite a now warmer global temperature.
Make your own mind up, to me it looks very bleak indeed until the mid 2020’s.
We have unknowns biggest being volcanic activity or lack of it going forward.
But over 80% of all major volcanic eruptions since 1600ad have been associated at or around solar minimums.
I agree bleak going forward ,how bleak is the question.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
“I agree bleak going forward ,how bleak is the question.”
Very severe for agriculture as many of the cold shots will through late Spring and Summer time.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
September 11, 2013 at 11:28 am
Indeed, the Dalton kicked off with the VEI 6 Arctic eruption of Laki.
gary gulrud says:
“Indeed, the Dalton kicked off with the VEI 6 Arctic eruption of Laki.”
The start of that cold event cluster is in 1782: http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/tcet.dat
The eruption is triggered by the sharp rise in temperature after the long cold 1782-3 winter. Maybe JJA of 1784 could have been cooled from remaining high altitude SO2, but I don’t see any other cool seasons there that can be attributed to stratospheric aerosols, they are supposed to be warming in the north hemisphere winters. The 1783/4 winter is classic, it’s the same heliocentric configuration as in 1962/3, and in 1009/10 when the River Nile froze. It has done that twice in the last 2Kyrs, the previous was ~179yrs earlier on the same configuration type.
Ulric global temperatures versus volcanic activity correlate very well. The higher the volcanic activity the lower the global temperatures will be.
Take the year without a summer around 1815ad, that came shortly after a massive volcanic eruption of Mt Toba
In addition if the volcanic activity is in the higher latitudes it will enhance a more meridional atmospheric circulation due to the warming of the stratosphere.
So2 from volcanic eruptions causes incoming sunlight to be absorbed in the stratosphere ,which is then reflected out to space never reaching the surface, of the earth causing cooling. No doubt about that.
EXAMPLES OF GLOBAL COOLING IN THE AFTERMATH OF HISTORIC ERUPTIONS:
Observational evidence shows a clear correlation between historic eruptions and subsequent years of cold climate conditions. Four well-known historic examples are described below.
LAKI (1783) — The eastern U.S. recorded the lowest-ever winter average temperature in 1783-84, about 4.8OC below the 225-year average. Europe also experienced an abnormally severe winter. Benjamin Franklin suggested that these cold conditions resulted from the blocking out of sunlight by dust and gases created by the Iceland Laki eruption in 1783. The Laki eruption was the largest outpouring of basalt lava in historic times. Franklin’s hypothesis is consistent with modern scientific theory, which suggests that large volumes of SO2 are the main culprit in haze-effect global cooling.
TAMBORA (1815) — Thirty years later, in 1815, the eruption of Mt. Tambora, Indonesia, resulted in an extremely cold spring and summer in 1816, which became known as the year without a summer. The Tambora eruption is believed to be the largest of the last ten thousand years. New England and Europe were hit exceptionally hard. Snowfalls and frost occurred in June, July and August and all but the hardiest grains were destroyed. Destruction of the corn crop forced farmers to slaughter their animals. Soup kitchens were opened to feed the hungry. Sea ice migrated across Atlantic shipping lanes, and alpine glaciers advanced down mountain slopes to exceptionally low elevations.
KRAKATAU (1883) — Eruption of the Indonesian volcano Krakatau in August 1883 generated twenty times the volume of tephra released by the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Krakatau was the second largest eruption in history, dwarfed only by the eruption of neighboring Tambora in 1815 (see above). For months after the Krakatau eruption, the world experienced unseasonably cool weather, brilliant sunsets, and prolonged twilights due to the spread of aerosols throughout the stratosphere. The brilliant sunsets are typical of atmospheric haze. The unusual and prolonged sunsets generated considerable contemporary debate on their origin.They also provided inspiration for artists who dipicted the vibrant nature of the sunsets in several late 19th-century paintings, two of which are noted here.
Krakatau sunset
In London, the Krakatau sunsets were clearly distinct from the familiar red sunsets seen through the smoke-laden atmosphere of the city. This is demonstrated in the painting shown here of a sunset from the banks of the Thames River, created by artist William Ascroft on November 26, 1883.
The vivid red sky in Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream”
The vivid red sky in Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream” was inspired by the vibrant twilights in Norway, his native land.
For a more thorough description of the 1883 eruption, see Krakatau.
PINATUBO (1991) — Mt. Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines on June 15, 1991, and one month later Mt. Hudson in southern Chile also erupted. The Pinatubo eruption produced the largest sulfur oxide cloud this century. The combined aerosol plume of Mt. Pinatubo and Mt. Hudson diffused around the globe in a matter of months. The data collected after these eruptions show that mean world temperatures decreased by about 1 degree Centigrade over the subsequent two years. This cooling effect was welcomed by many scientists who saw it as a counter-balance to global warming.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
“Ulric global temperatures versus volcanic activity correlate very well. The higher the volcanic activity the lower the global temperatures will be.”
In most cases the worst cold is before the eruption. Winter 1783/4 has nothing to do with volcanic cooling. Summer 1816 would have suffered weak solar conditions too to be that cool, a stronger short term solar signal will completely hide the volcanic cooling effects in the mid-upper latitudes, as in summer 1884 after Krakatau. Global temp’s will not drop appreciably from volcanic cooling because of the ENSO response.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
“In addition if the volcanic activity is in the higher latitudes it will enhance a more meridional atmospheric circulation due to the warming of the stratosphere.”
An enhanced zonal wind driven by heating of the tropical stratosphere by the volcanic aerosols is responsible for the regions of warming:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/92GL02627/abstract
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockMaoWinterWarming92GL02627.pdf
I disagree totally with you on that point. The article I sent verifies this as well as the recent global cooling associated with MT.PINATUBO eruption.
In fact I have never seen a global warm up following a volcanic eruption, not even once.
Volcanoes
“The sun was dark and its darkness lasted for eighteen months; each day it shone for about four hours; and still this light was only a feeble shadow; the fruits did not ripen and the wine tasted like sour grapes.” As this Michael the Syrian quote regarding the weather of 536 A.D. demonstrates, a climate catastrophe that blots out the sun can really spoil your day. Procopius of Caesarea remarked: “During this year [536 A.D.] a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness. and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear.” Many documents from 535 – 536 A.D.–the time of King Arthur in Britain–speak of the terrible “dry fog” or cloud of dust that obscured the sun, causing widespread crop failures in Europe, and summer frosts, drought, and famine in China. Tree ring studies in Europe confirm several years of very poor growth around that time, and ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica show highly elevated levels of atmospheric sulfuric acid dust existed.
“Volcanic Winter” resulted. Sulfur dioxide reacts with water to form sulfuric acid droplets (aerosol particles), which are highly reflective and reduce the amount of incoming sunlight. The potential eruption that led to the 535 – 536 A.D. climate calamity would have likely been a magnitude 7 event on the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI)–a “super colossal” eruption that one can expect to occur only once every 1000 years. The Volcanic Explosivity Index is a logarithmic scale like the Richter scale used to rate earthquakes, so a magnitude 7 eruption would eject ten times more material than the two largest eruptions of the past century–the magnitude 6 eruptions of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines (1991) and Novarupta in Alaska (1912).
Figure 1. An 18 km-high volcanic plume from one of a series of explosive eruptions of Mount Pinatubo beginning on 12 June 1991, viewed from Clark Air Base (about 20 km east of the volcano). Three days later, the most powerful eruption produced a plume that rose nearly 40 km, penetrating well into the stratosphere. Pinatubo’s sulfur emissions cooled the Earth by about 1°F (0.5°C) for 1 – 2 years. (Photograph by David H. Harlow, USGS.)
Super-colossal eruptions
There has been only one other magnitude 7 “super-colossal” eruption in the past 1500 years–the massive eruption of the Indonesian volcano Tambora in 1815. The sulfur pumped by this eruption into the stratosphere dimmed sunlight so extensively that global temperatures fell by about 2°F (1°C) for 1 – 2 years afterward. This triggered the famed Year Without a Summer in 1816. Killing frosts and snow storms in May and June 1816 in Eastern Canada and New England caused widespread crop failures, and lake and river ice were observed as far south as Pennsylvania in July and August. The Tambora eruption was about 40% smaller than the 535 – 536 A.D. event, as measured by the number of sulfur aerosol particles deposited in Greenland ice cores.
In an article published in 2008 in the American Geophysical Union journal EOS, Dr. Ken Verosub of the University of California, Davis Department of Geology estimated that future eruptions capable of causing “Volcanic Winter” effects severe enough to depress global temperatures by 2°F (1°C) and trigger widespread crop failures for 1 – 2 years afterwards should occur about once every 200 – 300 years. Even a magnitude 6 eruption, such as the 1600 eruption of the Peruvian volcano Huaynaputina, can cause climatic change capable of killing millions of people. The Huaynaputina eruption is blamed for the Russian famine of 1601-1603, which killed over half a million people and led to the overthrow of Tsar Boris Godunov. Thankfully, the climatic impacts of all of these historic magnitude 6 and 7 eruptions have been relatively short-lived. After about two years, the sulfuric acid aerosol particles have settled out of the stratosphere, returning the climate to its former state.
Mega-colossal eruptions
Even more extreme eruptions have occurred in Earth’s past–eruptions ten times more powerful than the Tambora eruption, earning a ranking of 8 out of 8 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI). These “mega-colossal” eruptions occur only about once every 10,000 years, but have much longer-lasting climatic effects and thus are a more significant threat to human civilization. According to the Toba Catastrophe Theory, a mega-colossal eruption at Toba Caldera, Sumatra, about 74,000 years ago, was 3500 times greater than the Tambora eruption. According to model simulations, an eruption this large can pump so much sulfur dioxide gas into the stratosphere that the atmosphere does not have the capacity to oxidize all the SO2 to sulfuric acid aerosol. The atmosphere oxidizes as much SO2 as it can, leaving a huge reservoir of SO2 in the stratosphere. This SO2 gradually reacts to form sulfuric acid as the OH radicals needed for this reaction are gradually produced. The result is a much longer-lasting climate effect than the 1 – 2 years that the magnitude 6 and 7 events of 535, 1600, 1815, and 1991 lasted. A magnitude 8 eruption like the Toba event can cool the globe for 6 – 10 years (Figure 3), which may be long enough to trigger an ice age–if the climate is already on the verge of tipping into an ice age. Rampino and Self (1992) argued that the sulfur aerosol veil from Toba was thick and long-lasting enough to cool the globe by 3 – 5°C (5 – 9°F), pushing the climate–which was already cooling and perhaps headed towards an ice age–into a full-scale ice age. They suggested that the response of Canada to the volcano played a particularly important role, with their model predicting a 12°C (22°F) reduction in summer temperatures in Canada. This would have favored the growth of the Laurentide ice sheet, increasing the reflectivity (albedo) of the Earth, reflecting more sunlight and reducing temperatures further. The controversial Toba Catastrophe Theory asserts that the resulting sudden climate change reduced the Earth’s population of humans to 1,000 – 10,000 breeding pairs. More recent research has shed considerable doubt on the idea that the Toba eruption pushed the climate into an ice age, though. Oppenheimer (2002) found evidence supporting only a 2°F (1.1°C) cooling of the globe, for the 1000 years after the Toba eruption. Zielinski et al. (1996) argued that the Toba eruption did not trigger a major ice age–the eruption merely pushed the globe into a cool period that lasted 200 years. Timmereck et al. (2010) used a model to show that the sulfate particles inthe stratosphere would have clumped together after the eruption, limiting the colling effect to four years, with a maximum global reduction in temperature of 3.5°C. Interestingly, a previous super-eruption of Toba, 788,000 years ago, coincided with a transition from an ice age to a warm period.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
“I disagree totally with you on that point.”
I made a few points, so I cannot tell which you refer to.
“The article I sent verifies this as well as the recent global cooling associated with MT.PINATUBO eruption.”
It’s rubbish, no way was it 1°C cooling:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1990/to:1995
“In fact I have never seen a global warm up following a volcanic eruption, not even once.”
Probably because you have not looked well enough. It’s surprising that no one, that I am aware of, noticed the stronger cooling before the eruptions.
The above article proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that volcanic eruptions equate to global cooling, although some parts of the globe during certain seasons can warm,but the overall effect is for lower temperatures.
True LOW LATITUDE volcanos may promote (EL NINO), but when PROLONGED LOW solar activity takes place it is thought not only does volcanic activity increase in general but the biggest increases in volcanic activity are in the higher latitudes , which have no effects on ENSO, and warm the stratosphere at those latitudes enhancing solar effects which both serve to promote a more meridional atmospheric circulation.
Of note, global temperatures did drop despite El Nino conditions when Mt. Pinatubo errupted in the early 1990’s.
I have presented to you the data in black and white if you don’t believe it so be it.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
“I have presented to you the data in black and white if you don’t believe it so be it.”
Just postulates from folk without even the foggiest awareness of short term solar factors. The coldest of events have no volcanic eruption to be connected to, and most of the large eruptions have the most severe cooling BEFORE the event.
Past history says what I say to be true ,not what you are saying.
On this one I think we should agree, to disagree.
It’s rubbish, no way was it 1°C cooling:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1990/to:1995
and it shows a cooling following the PINATUBO eruption of about-.4c, I did not say 1c due to pinatubo, but I did say cooling and your chart verifies it and makes my point.
Ah, but look at the last two volcanoes: The very distinct, very sharp changes in the transmission in the past thirty years are much smaller than what the 536 year statements quoted above seem to indicate.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/grad/mloapt/mlo_transmission.gif
(That image is from WUWT Solar page.)
Super-colossal eruptions
There has been only one other magnitude 7 “super-colossal” eruption in the past 1500 years–the massive eruption of the Indonesian volcano Tambora in 1815. The sulfur pumped by this eruption into the stratosphere dimmed sunlight so extensively that global temperatures fell by about 2°F (1°C) for 1 – 2 years afterward. This triggered the famed Year Without a Summer in 1816. Killing frosts and snow storms in May and June 1816 in Eastern Canada and New England caused widespread crop failures, and lake and river ice were observed as far south as Pennsylvania in July and August. The Tambora eruption was about 40% smaller than the 535 – 536 A.D. event, as measured by the number of sulf
You don’t BELIEVE this ? I am just curious.
I do believe this.
but nevertheless transmission was lower and so were global temperatures for a time.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
“LOW LATITUDE volcanos may promote (EL NINO), but when PROLONGED LOW solar activity takes place it is thought not only does volcanic activity increase in general but the biggest increases in volcanic activity are in the higher latitudes”
Where are Toba, Tambora, Krakatau and Pinatubo then?…..
“..which have no effects on ENSO, and warm the stratosphere at those latitudes enhancing solar effects which both serve to promote a more meridional atmospheric circulation.”
Laki was mostly not a stratospheric event, the ash clouds increased surface temperatures through summer 1783. Have you any examples of “increases in volcanic activity in the higher latitudes” ?
[PDF]
volcanic eruptions and climate – Department of Environmental …
climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/ROG2000.pdf
Salvatore Del Prete says:
“You don’t BELIEVE this ? I am just curious.”
No I don’t believe that all of the cooling of summer 1816 (or 535/6AD) was solely due to Tambora.
I do not either, much was due to the prolonged solar minimum, but I do believe the volcanic activity enhances the cooling effects from the sun.
Maybe you misunderstood me, I like you think prolonged solar minimums are the reason for cooling, but I also believe one of the secondary effects associated with prolonged solar minimums is an increase in volcanic activity , which will enhance the already in place cooling effects due to a prolonged solar minimum condition.
If you plot all major volcanic eruptions and large earthquakes since 1600ad you will see a very strong correlation around and about solar minimums.
Space and Science Research Center
P.O. Box 607841
Orlando FL 32860
Sun’s Activity Linked to Largest
Earthquakes and Volcanoes
Press Release – SSRC 1-2010
8:00 AM March 1, 2010
Today, the Space and Science Research Center (SSRC) releases its preliminary findings of the incidence of major geophysical events including earthquakes and volcanoes tied to the Sun’s activity and climate change.
The SSRC, the leading independent research center in the United States on the subject of the next climate change to a period of extended cold weather, has concluded a detailed comparison of solar activity with major earthquakes and volcanic activity. It has found a significant correlation exists between periods of reduced activity by the Sun, previously linked to cold climates are now identified with the most disastrous earthquakes in the United States and major volcanic eruptions around the globe.
The research for this preliminary study was completed in September 2009. The research report was posted today on the SSRC’s web site. It establishes a strong link between what the Sun is doing and the largest natural disasters and significantly extends the potential impact on the Earth of changes in the Sun which the SSRC and others have established as the most important element of global climate change.
According to SSRC Director, John Casey, “ The wide range and depth of research done by the SSRC and its associated scientists over the years on the Sun’s activity for determining impacts on the Earth’s climate change has produced what may be another important revelation of how the Sun may affect the Earth. Not only is the Sun the primary driver for climate change, but it may even be a significant influence in tectonic plate movement resulting in cycles of increased intensity of geological events such as earthquakes and volcanoes.
The recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile though not part of the original study are nonetheless in line with reduced periods of solar activity and are especially correlated to the advent of the current “solar hibernation.” These “hibernations,’ a term coined by the SSRC in 2008, are the times when the Sun reduces its level of energetic output to historically low levels, roughly every two centuries. As we know from the ample research of other solar physicists world-wide and the SSRC’s own work, solar hibernations always bring long lasting cold climate eras to the Earth.”
Casey added, “It now appears these reduced activity periods of the Sun that bring us cold climates could bring much more. We may have found another tool for predicting the onset of greatly increased geophysical activity by following the same cycles of the Sun
Table 1.Volcanoes of greater than or equal to VEI of 5 from 1650 to 2009.
This list of large volcanic eruptions since 1650 was used as the baseline list for comparison against solar activity, i.e. periods of reduced sunspot count to determine any apparent associations. 5* = a class five VEI with potentially large date uncertainty, P* = plinian large class eruption, assumed >VEI 5. The study did not include activity associated with geological hot spots or caldera (super volcano) sites. Source: Smithsonian Institute.
Volcano Location Year VEI
1. Shiveluch Kamchatka Penninsula 1650 5
2. Long Island N.E. New Guinea 1660 6
3. Usu Hokkaido, Japan 1663 5
4. Shikotsu Hokkaido, Japan 1667 5
5. Gamkonora Halmahera, Indonesia 1673 5*
6. Tongkoko Sulawesi, Indonesia 1680 5*
7. Fuji Honshu, Japan 1707 5
8. Katla So. Iceland 1721 5*
9. Shikotsu Hokkaido, Japan 1739 5
10. Katla So.Iceland 1755 5
11. Pago New Britain 1800 P**
12. St.Helens Washington State, USA 1800 5
13. Tambora Lesser Sunda Islands,Indo. 1815 7
14. Galungung Java, Indonesia 1822 5
15. Cosiguina Nicaragua 1835 5
16. Shiveluch Kamchatka Penninsula 1854 5
17. Askja N.E.Iceland 1875 5
18. Krakatau Indonesia 1883 6
19. Okataina New Zealand 1886 5
20. Santa Maria Guatemala 1902 6
21. Lolobau New Britain 1905 P*
22. Ksudach Kamchatka Penninsula 1907 5
23. Novarupta Alaska Penninsula 1912 6
24. Azul, Cerro Chile 1932 5+
25. Kharimkotan Kuril Islands 1933 5
26. Bezimianny Kamchatka Peninsula 1956 5
27. Agung Lesser Sunda Islands, Indo. 1963 5
28. St. Helens Washington State, USA 1980 5
29. El Chichon Mexico 1982 5
30. Pinatubo Philippines 1991 6
31. Hudson, Cerro So. Chile 1991 5+
************************************************************************
Of the 31 eruptions documented since 1650 with a VEI greater than or equal to 5, a total of 25 occurred during a reduced period of sunspots if not a major reduction in sunspots or a solar hibernation, e.g. the Dalton or Maunder Minimums. This preliminary study showed 80.6% of the largest eruptions took place during extended solar activity minimums. Significantly, the following list of the eight largest volcanic eruptions globally (VEI>6) since 1650, shows all but one took place only during a solar hibernation, or significant reduction in solar activity as measured by sunspot count. 3
*************************************************************************************
Table 2.Volcanic eruptions that took place during major solar minimums and solar hibernations.
This table establishes the strong relationship between the largest volcanic eruptions and solar activity lows on the order of the Centennial and Bi-Centennial Cycles defined by the RC Theory.
READ AFTER THE CHART ABOUT THE CORRELATION.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
“..but I also believe one of the secondary effects associated with prolonged solar minimums is an increase in volcanic activity..”
and quotes:
“Sun’s Activity Linked to Largest
Earthquakes and Volcanoes
Press Release – SSRC 1-2010
8:00 AM March 1, 2010”
They typically happen on stronger warm bursts after very cold seasons, whether in a prolonged minimum or not. I found the relationship myself in 2008.
“Ulric Lyons says: September 12, 2013 at 1:54 pm
“Sun’s Activity Linked to Largest
Earthquakes and Volcanoes
Press Release – SSRC 1-2010
8:00 AM March 1, 2010″
They typically happen on stronger warm bursts after very cold seasons, whether in a prolonged minimum or not. I found the relationship myself in 2008.”
Could you please elaborate, I’m very interested in this topic. I’ve done some research myself and found what seems to be a periodicity of very large eruptions VEI6+ and very large eqs, M9+, and I don’t think there is a direct connection with solar radiation levels too.
I believe there won’t be any large eruptions for some time, 10 years or more, *because* we have had a “cluster” of large eqs. in the last decade.
Salvatore Del Prete says: September 12, 2013 at 11:30 am
“[PDF]
volcanic eruptions and climate – Department of Environmental …
climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/ROG2000.pdf”
I could not open the link, could you post it again. Thanks.
Ulric Lyons says:September 11, 2013 at 6:32 pm
The start of that cold event cluster is in 1782: http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/tcet.dat
The eruption is triggered by the sharp rise in temperature after the long cold 1782-3 winter. Maybe JJA of 1784 could have been cooled from remaining high altitude SO2, but I don’t see any other cool seasons there that can be attributed to stratospheric aerosols, they are supposed to be warming in the north hemisphere winters. The 1783/4 winter is classic, it’s the same heliocentric configuration as in 1962/3, and in 1009/10 when the River Nile froze. It has done that twice in the last 2Kyrs, the previous was ~179yrs earlier on the same configuration type.
How could a dramatic rise in atmospheric temperatures be connected with volcanic eruptions?
I means, cause volcanic eruptions …
F. Guimaraes says:
“How could a dramatic rise in atmospheric temperatures be connected with volcanic eruptions?”
I’m really not sure, maybe a local change in surface pressure regime, ground water or precipitation changes, probably least of all thermal expansion, it’s a tricky question. But the correlation is still useful for prediction, like this (Japan was supposed to be on the list too):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/22/volcanoes-active-inactive-and-retroactive/#comment-1320500
I just did a blind hindcast on Huaynaputina. I had no idea what month it was in, and not clear whether it was in 1600 or 1601. I figured from the heliocentric sequence, that the big cold shot was early winter 1599/1600, and the strong warm burst week two to three February 1600:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huaynaputina
and that it should have got very cold again in April:
http://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/1600_1649.htm
Ulric Lyons says:September 12, 2013 at 7:16 pm
“I’m really not sure, maybe a local change in surface pressure regime, ground water or precipitation changes, probably least of all thermal expansion, it’s a tricky question. But the correlation is still useful for prediction, like this (Japan was supposed to be on the list too):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/22/volcanoes-active-inactive-and-retroactive/#comment-1320500“
It’s interesting that you may have found a correlation, but I don’t think there is any causal connection. Your answer seems to agree with my thought. Assuming that they’re not causally connected, do you think they could have a common cause?
Does your theory/model apply better for large eruptions or VEI is not important?
If we neglect the not very large eruptions, VEI less than 6, I believe the correlation with solar cycles improves, but if we don’t consider also the energy release of large EQs (mag 9+) I don’t think it’s possible to form a logical pattern.
The problem is, our data/information about large volcanic eruptions is much better than about EQs and we have to draw conclusions about EQs based on ~ 100 years of continuous seismic activity observation, which is a blink of an eye in geologic terms.
Ulric Lyons, we are close in agreeing on the big picture when it comes to solar/climatic relationships, which is good.
It is almost impossible to agree on every single matter.
David Archibald says:
September 10, 2013 at 2:34 pm
David, if I throw a hissy-fit, you’ll know it … and if you think that was a fit, you’ve led a sheltered life. I asked you politely to post up your data and code. You didn’t. So I asked you again, still nicely. You still didn’t. So I asked again, in a much less than pleasant tone.
I see that although my requests didn’t work, the insult must have, because you’ve emailed the file to Anthony. And he sent it to me. And I threw it in the trash. I wasn’t interested in behind-the-public’s-back kinds of deals. I told you that when you made your first offer to email it to me. That’s not how science is done.
I see that now Anthony has posted it up, which is more than generous of him. Had you tried that with me, I’d have just asked you again to post it up for public view.
And no, I’ll not apologize for asking you to publicly post your data and code, nor for repeating the request, nor for adding an insult on the third time that I asked you to do what you should have done to start with, and without being asked. I’ve gotten this kind of runaround about data and code from plenty of CAGW supporters. I don’t take it from them, and I’m not going to take it from you either.
w.
X says:
“It’s interesting that you may have found a correlation, but I don’t think there is any causal connection. Your answer seems to agree with my thought.”
Well patently it does not.
“Assuming that they’re not causally connected, do you think they could have a common cause?”
I was not assuming that, you were.
David, I’ve now downloaded your spreadsheet … only to find out that it doesn’t answer the question that I started by asking, viz:
So … I now have the spreadsheet.
But what is the source of the data?
w.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
September 12, 2013 at 9:00 am
Salvatore, although there are a number of stories such as you’ve told, an investigation of the actual temperature records finds that volcanoes have very little effect. I’ve researched and studied this question quite intensively, not by just looking for dramatic tales as you’ve done, but by looking to see how much effect the volcanoes had on the actual temperature records. My results are detailed in the following posts:
Prediction is hard, especially of the future.
Pinatubo and the Albedo Thermostat
Volcanic Disruptions
New Data, Old Claims About Volcanoes
Missing the Missing Summer
Dronning Maud Meets the Little Ice Age
Volcanoes: Active, Inactive, and Retroactive
Stacked Volcanoes Falsify Models
BEST, Volcanoes, and Climate Sensitivity
Now, if you’re serious about investing your claims regarding volcanoes, you’ll read each and every one of those posts, and then show me where I’m wrong. No one’s shown any flaws in the papers yet, but you might very well be the first …
On the other hand, if you’re not serious about investigating your claims, you’ll read a couple of the posts, skip the rest, and come back with more anecdotes …
Folks, the truth is that if you don’t know when the volcano occurred, you won’t be able to spot it in the global temperature record. Not even Pinatubo made a recognizable blip in the temperature. For example, here’s a stretch of the HadCRUT3 temperature record containing one small and two large volcanoes … can you spot them?
Q.E.D. …
w.
Ulric Lyons says:
September 12, 2013 at 1:54 pm
In fact, you guys are both just talking without doing your homework. I just downloaded the study “Suns Activity blah blah blah”. It’s here … and it’s hogwash. They claim that
So I went and got the Hoyt/Schatten sunspot numbers that they used, and I ran the average … the average year since 1610 has had 34.2 sunspots.
Then I calculated the average number of sunspots during those years containing volcanoes.
36.6 sunspots.
In other words, their claim is a total fabrication, and there is NO STATISTICAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SUNSPOTS AND VOLCANOES.
Please stop quoting any random nonsense you find on the web, and RUN THE NUMBERS YOURSELF to see if they are true. Otherwise you end up posting (and arguing) about total fabrications with no relation to reality.
w.
Henry Clark says:
September 9, 2013 at 7:55 pm
Ireland doesn’t produce enough total tonnage of wheat to be even listed among the dozens of countries in the preceding table link, but basically they are next to nothing in total production compared to the U.S. 60 million tons/year, the Indian 90 million tons/year, and so on.
Ireland biggest crop is grass.
“Permanent meadows and pastures (percentage of agricultural land) 2007, 75.1 % of agricultural area”
http://en.worldstat.info/Europe/Ireland/Land
Map:
http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/geography/agriculture.html
“Current use of land
http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/life-society/farming/farming-in-ireland-overvi/land-use-in-ireland/
“Grass is the dominant crop, accounting for 80% of utilizable land, which probably explains our reputation for “40 shades of green”. Around 10% of land is used for growing arable crops, predominantly wheat, barley and oats.”
Willis Eschenbach says:
“In fact, you guys are both just talking without doing your homework”
I have only discussed my homework, I was talking about seasonal temperature differentials not yearly sunspots.