Dr. Nicola Scafetta has written an extensive summary of the state of climate science today. He’s done some very extensive analysis of the solar contribution that bears examination. Pay particular attention to this graph from page 49:
WUWT readers may remember him from some previous papers and comments he’s written that have been covered here:
Scafetta: New paper on TSI, surface temperature, and modeling
Scafetta: Benestad and Schmidt’s calculations are “robustly” flawed.
He writes to me with this introduction:
On February 26, 2009 I was invited by the Environmental Protection Agency Office of the Science Advisor (OSA) and National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE) to present a talk about my research on climate change. I thought that the best way to address this issue was to present an overview of all topics involved about the issue and their interconnections.
So, I prepared a kind of holistic presentation with the title “Climate Change and Its Causes, A Discussion about Some Key Issues”. Then, a colleague from Italy who watched my EPA presentation suggested me to write a paper in Italian and submit it to an Italian science journal which was recently published.
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Download the report here (PDF -warning over 10 MB – long download time on slow connections)
This work covers most topics presented by Scafetta at a seminar at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, DC USA, February 26, 2009. A video of the seminar is here:
The Italian version of the original paper can be downloaded (with possible journal restrictions) from here
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Here is the table of contents, there’s something in this report for everyone:
Climate Change and Its Causes: A Discussion About Some Key Issues
Introduction … 4
The IPCC’s pro-anthropogenic warming bias … 6
The climate sensitivity uncertainty to CO2 increase … 8
The climatic meaning of Mann’s Hockey Stick temperature graph … 10
The climatic meaning of recent paleoclimatic temperature reconstructions … 12
The phenomenological solar signature since 1600 … 14
The ACRIM vs. PMOD satellite total solar irradiance controversy … 16
Problems with the global surface temperature record … 18
A large 60 year cycle in the temperature record … 19
Astronomical origin of the climate oscillations … 22
Conclusion … 26
Bibliography … 27
Appendix…29-54
A: The IPCC’s anthropogenic global warming theory … 29
B: Chemical vs. Ice-Core CO2 atmospheric concentration estimates … 30
C: Milky Way’s spiral arms, Cosmic Rays and the Phanerozoic temperature cycles … 31
D: The Holocene cooling trend and the millennial-scale temperature cycles … 32
E: The last 1000 years of global temperature, solar and ice cover data … 33
F: The solar dynamics fits 5000 years of human history … 34
G: The Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age – A global phenomenon … 35
H: Compatibility between the AGWT climate models and the Hockey Stick … 36
I: The 11-year solar cycle in the global surface temperature record … 37
J: The climate models underestimate the 11-year solar cycle signature … 38
K: The ACRIM-PMOD total solar irradiance satellite composite controversy … 39
L: Willson and Hoyt’s statements about the ACRIM and Nimbus7 TSI published data .. 40
M: Cosmic ray flux, solar activity and low cloud cover positive feedback … 41
N: Possible mechanisms linking cosmic ray flux and cloud cover formation … 42
O: A warming bias in the surface temperature records? … 43
P: A underestimated Urban Heat Island effect? … 44
Q: A 60 year cycle in multisecular climate records … 45
R: A 60 year cycle in solar, geological, climate and fishery records … 46
S: The 11-year solar cycle and the V-E-J planet alignment … 47
T: The 60 and 20 year cycles in the wobbling of the Sun around the CMSS … 48
U: The 60 and 20 year cycles in global surface temperature and in the CMSS … 49
V: A 60 year cycle in multisecular solar records … 50
W: The bi-secular solar cycle: Is a 2010-2050 little ice age imminent? … 51
X: Temperature records do not correlate to CO2 records … 52
Y: The CO2 fingerprint: Climate model predictions and observations disagree … 53
Z: The 2007 IPCC climate model projections. Can we trust them? … 54
Clive E Burkland (22:15:13) :
wayne (20:38:09) :
Clive, respectably, I think you and I are on different wavelengths. I’ve never heard of Fred Bailey, sorry. You mentioned the word “yearly”. No, no. I am speaking of decades if not centuries. How often do the major gas planets align, conjunction or opposition. That is the time period between maximums and minimums of the sun’s actual center to the SSB. Sounds like the men in the paper were also speaking of yearly.
I will have to check your “about 1.5 million km”. I remember reading that the SSB never gets even one radius from the sun’s center. One and a half million kilometers would place it clearly outside the sun’s surface proper. I could be wrong on that, never gave it much thought or testing, interesting though.
The Horizons system should show that between 199x or so when they aligned (remember to newspaper articles) and some many decades forward or backwards when they align on the opposite side should show a rough reading to the suns’ orbit’s maximum diameter when you subtract those points. Be sure to use barycenter coordinates without light-time corrections if you try that.
Or simpler is to use a calculator, gravity equations, mass, and mean radius of the bodies with all bodies aligned, you won’t even need vectors. Sorry, I’m not going to do the calculations for you though.
Or, believe me, the effect I mentioned is absolutely real, tiny, and occurs over decades.
anna v (22:30:05) :
I just laugh when on one hand some folks decry the state of temperature data and on the other hand applaud when cycles can be found.
Selective skepticism.
Leif,
With the following caveats,
1) As a human, I always resented being given a number, whether it was SS#, driver License, military draft number, etc
2) My college professor in Static and Dynamics gave me advice once, “In your engineering career you will always be asked for a number, I have found the number six to be highly useful. You are welcome to use it.”
3) My philosophical alter ego is whispering in my ear that some of the 14 Svalgaardian points should be reworded. I may do that eventually, but for now . . . .
4) I am willing to see where this leads me, that is, I am willing to see how deep the rabbit hole is. I am taking the red pill.
Here goes:
a) My Leif Score = 9
b) My Leif # = 16308 [Hex 0x3fb4 if I got the Deci to Hex conversion right]
John
60 YEAR CYCLE (approx) can be due to a number of phenomena. Most likely is linked to the period of circulation in one of the two mayor Atlantic gyres (subpolar or more likely subtropical, controlling AMO, and affecting PDO, Pacific is only twice volume of Atlantic).
I understand that Dr. Svalgaard thinks that there is also part related to TSI, the solar cycles have one of its spectrum peaks just above 50 years http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/FFT-Power-Spectrum-SSN.png.
Dr. Scafetta went complicated way about it to link it to barycentre, but if he is not astronomically or astrologically challenged, there is far simpler explanation. Every ~59.5 years Jupiter and Saturn meat at the nose end of heliosphere in mar 1881, jan 1941, june 2000, the years that coincide with a significant turn around in so called ‘global temperature’
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Solar?date=0&utc=2069%2F07%2F20+20%3A17%3A43&jd=2476948.34564&img=-k1&sys=-Sf&eyes=0&imgsize=600&orb=-b2&lat=50&ns=North&lon=7%B0&ew=East&hlat=90%B0&hns=North&hlon=0%B0&elements=
wayne (00:28:19) :
Clive E Burkland (22:15:13) :
wayne (20:38:09) :
Clive, respectably, I think you and I are on different wavelengths.
Wavelengths are not important, we are dealing with distances that can be measured accurately. This is a science blog, please present your JPL evidence or retract.
OT
The Catlin Arctic Survery Team hit by severe weather, latest report
Ice Teams Feeling Under the Weather
It’s been a tough week for our teams in Resolute this week. Having worked like huskies to get everything ready for a planned midweek drop off onto the sea ice, the elements have intervened and kept them land-bound and cooped-up in Resolute Bay.
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/
I’ve got it! The dark matter near the center of the sun also orbits the barycentre and induces tidal flows in the sun. Sometimes it is even outside the sun. Disprove that Leif!
Creating an unknown force of unknown strength with unknown effects can explain anything, right? Well it might be good for a research grant…
AlanG
“If there is a link between barycentre changes and the PDO and AMO then climate is much more sensitive to the sun than is implied by the 0.1% changes in TSI. The cause is unknown yet. Possible candidates are cumulative TSI, magnetic effects on the ionosphere, or increased downwelling radiation from the stratosphere driven by changes of UV. UV changes much more than TSI and the stratosphere absorbs UV.”
—…—…—…
OK, well then we’ve measured (maybe, if GISS/HADCRU/NOAA are measuring UHI correctly!) LESS THAN 1/2 of 1 degree change in surface temperatures since 1970. (A value that changes month-by-month by the way.)
Then 273 + 0.5 deg C + 20 deg C (average temp) = 293.5/293 = 0.1 % chance in earth’s temperature.
That we don’t know (yet!) the cause of the 0.1 percent increase is NOT cause for destroying the free world’s economies by “combating global warming” with tax increases and Enron’s carbon trading schemes.
I would like to know, what other people think about the subject matter, not what somebody called Leif Svalgaard thinks about other people.
This site is one of the best ever but I’ve had enough of Leif, thank you.
Leif Svalgaard (16:12:55) :
I would prefer a simplification:
1. There is no credible evidence to support the AGW vodoo.
2. It isn’t necessary to know what causes climate change to know that No 1 is correct.
3. See one and two.
I would also like to see your take on Miskolzi. It’s tempting to quote him, but It needs to be examined by folks who can understand both the math and the physics. I have no confidence in the opinions expressed by people like Gavin Schmidt.
Leif Svalgaard (14:44:14) :
As that Great Serbian pseudo-scientist put so clearly:
“on face of it, if one was to be too pedantic, one would be obliged to ascertain that energy levels required to satisfactorily pass the test, as required by the most rigorous of scientific standards, are to a degree numerically challenged”
Quote correct, attribution a bit of the mark. There is a subtle difference between Serb (nationality) and Serbian (origin of Serbia), in this case correct would be Serb, or more accurately Montenegrian (pronounced Crnogorski) Serb.
steven mosher (00:28:19) :
anna v (22:30:05) :
“I just laugh when on one hand some folks decry the state of temperature data and on the other hand applaud when cycles can be found.
Selective skepticism.”
—…—…—
Ah, but dear writer, there ARE cycles present in the earth’s temperature records : short ones of 66 – 75 years, added on top of longer ones of 800-900 years = which is why we are warmer now and feed more people now, and those 800 years cycles are added to even longer ones of 12,000 years, added to even longer ones of 25,000 years.
It is the global warming alarmist who seek to ignore temperature cycles, distort them, and use them politically – but ONLY when it suits their purposes.
It is the skeptics who APPLY cycles to the problem, and who seek to find out WHY there are cycles present, rather than ignore cycles and distort and denigrate who investigate cycles.
It is the global warming alarmists who chose to base their “religion” (er, faith and laws) in linear extrapolations of a single 20 year period of distorted and manipulated numbers into four centuries of continued increase.
Clive E Burkland (00:53:22) :
I have nothing to retract. My evidence is Newtonian gravitation equations and a system of a sun and planets. JPL horizons was merely mentioned of a place on the web you could check positions years from now, forward or backwards if you wanted. If I offended you I didn’t mean to. Beside, this OT was for another commenter’s question and I think I have thoroughly explained what I meant to you.
How was the Oregon survey “faked”?
The survey is merely fatally flawed, however the ‘review paper’ sent out with it was tricked out in the font and format of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and was clearly meant to resemble a peer-reviewed journal paper.
It was no such thing, of course. The lead author was Arthur Robinson, who has never worked as a climate scientist, and the paper was full of the usual cherry picks and factual errors. Interesting approach to opinion-gathering.
As to the poll, here is a truly ‘sceptical’ assessment:
In conclusion, through his Global Warming Petition Project, Arthur Robinson has solicited the opinions of the wrong group of people in the wrong way and drawn the wrong conclusions about any possible consensus among relevant and qualified scientists regarding the hypothesis of human-caused global warming. His petition is unqualified to deliver answers about a consensus in which the public is interested. He has a right to conduct any kind of petition drive he wishes, but he is not ethically entitled to misrepresent his petition as a fair reflection of relevant scientific opinion. He has confused his political with his scientific aims and misled the public in the process.
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-11-12/#feature
steven mosher: “I just laugh when on one hand some folks decry the state of temperature data and on the other hand applaud when cycles can be found.
Selective skepticism.”
My thoughts entirely. Natural systems with 1/f noise, tend to appear to have cycles – that’s a fact. That doesn’t mean there aren’t cycles, but it sure does mean that one ought to be particularly careful before jumping to any assertion about apparent long term trends or cycles.
If you want to know where bad science like this gets us, read up on camp century cycles, the failure of those cycles to predict anything in the which was shown in the 1970s when the world started to warm instead of cool as predicted, and the way the same gullible idiots that believed camp century cycles, then fell for the bad science of manmade global warming.
I am surprised, I agree with all 14 points Dr. Svalgaard’s points (I am decimal 16383), i.e. perfect correlation (R^2=1), but then two of us disagree 99% of the time. It just shows that not every correlation gives a solution to a problem, or more likely his test is a ‘bit imperfect’ just as one or two hypothesis of mine (I think plural is hypotheses).
Phil Clarke (01:48:35) :
As to the poll, here is a truly ’sceptical’ assessment:
Both the Skeptics Society (publisher of this article) and CSI, publisher of Skeptical Inquirer magazine are selectively skeptical. I gave up my subscription to Skeptical Inquirer precisely for that reason.
Information from the end of the article says it all.
Al Gore? Give me a break.
The Author, Gary Whittenberger, is a free-lance writer and psychologist, living in Tallahassee, Florida. He received his doctoral degree from Florida State University after which he worked for 23 years as a psychologist in prisons. He has published many articles on science, philosophy, psychology, and religion, and their intersection.
Footnotes
1. Robinson, Arthur. 2008. “Purpose of Petition in Global Warming Petition Project.” http://www.petitionproject.org
2. Robinson, Arthur. 2008. “Frequently Asked Questions in Global Warming Petition Project.”
3. American Men and Women of Science. GALE CENGAGE Learning.
4. Robinson, A. B., Robinson, N. E., and Soon, W. “Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.” Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, 2007, 12, 7990.
5. Robinson, Arthur. “Qualifications of Signers in Global Warming Petition Project.” Ibid.
6. Solomon, Lawrence. 32,000 deniers. Posted May 16, 2008, 7:20 PM, by Jeff White in Financial Post.
7. Robinson, Arthur. 2008. E-mail communication to Howard Kessler, June 17.
8. Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. http://www.oism.org/oism/s32p21.htm
9. Gore, Al. 2006. An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It. Rondale Books.
West and Scarfetta have written a book to be released 30 March –
“DISRUPTED NETWORKS
From Physics to Climate Change
by Bruce J West (US Army Research Office, USA) & Nicola Scafetta (Duke University, USA)
…………This book provides a lens through which modern society is shown to depend on complex networks for its stability. One way to achieve this understanding is through the development of a new kind of science, one that is not explicitly dependent on the traditional disciplines of biology, economics, physics, sociology and so on; a science of networks. This text reviews, in non-mathematical language, what we know about the development of science in the twenty-first century and how that knowledge influences our world. In addition, it distinguishes the two-tiered science of the twentieth century, based on experiment and theory (data and knowledge) from the three-tiered science of experiment, computation and theory (data, information and knowledge) of the twenty-first century in everything from psychophysics to climate change.
This book is unique in that it addresses two parallel lines of argument. The first line is general and intended for a lay audience, but one that is scientifically sophisticated, explaining how the paradigm of science has been changed to accommodate the computer and large-scale computation. The second line of argument addresses what some consider the seminal scientific problem of climate change. The authors show how a misunderstanding of the change in the scientific paradigm has led to a misunderstanding of complex phenomena in general, and the causes of global warming in particular. ”
Some book sites only show West as the author but other sites show Scarfetta as well.
@ur momisugly Henry (17:00:37) :
“…How can you continue posting here?… Yet here I find that science is not what is being done. It is politics …. are you really a scientist interested in finding the truth.”
If I were a psychotherapist I might suggest that denial and projection are items for Henry to give some thought to.
Leif Svalgaard (19:30:49) :
[…]
BTW, I note that nobody has manned up to give their ‘Leif score/number’ 🙂
I’ve been trying to decide if I don’t know enough to have an opinion does this count as an ‘agree’ (1) or an ‘otherwise’ (0). On the one hand, I suppose it must be an ‘otherwise’ since it can’t really be an ‘agree’. On the other hand the points (9 and 10) are well understood by Leif so I’m happy to accept they are correct.
If the former applies my Leif score is 3FCF. If the latter applies it’s 3FFF.
Is it possible I’m perhaps taking things a little too seriously?
Why is it that this sort of research, which is in very great detail, looks more scientifically sound than the works that come out of the IPCC? In fact, given the very scant information released by the IPCC, which more often than not sound like political statements than scientific ones, why would anyone with a brain larger than that of a pea would prefer to listen to crap coming out of the IPCC than to listen to such well founded real science such as that presented here? I can only come to one conclusion. The IPCC and everything it stands for is nothing more than a scam trying to push a political agenda down everyone’s throat.
wayne (01:45:50) :
Clive E Burkland (00:53:22) :
I have nothing to retract. My evidence is Newtonian gravitation equations and a system of a sun and planets.
No offense taken. You made a statement, I challenged you with figures which you have not disputed or proven wrong.
End of discussion
Re: RACookPE1978 (Mar 15 01:37),
It is evident that there are cycles. Who is disputing that? It is the random correlations of cycles with other cycles that have no physical meaning that is being disputed.
Lets put it this way: If one postulates a physical mechanism that generates cycles of climate from cycles of sunspots it is necessary that a correlation is established unequivocally. If it is not found the postulated theory falls on its face.
Finding correlations is not sufficient to establish a connection between disparate cycles, if the physics is not there.
Example: two same size lakes in different continents will have the same wave trains highly correlated if the wind is the same strength. Neither the winds nor the waves are causally connected between the continents.
It is the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions that unfortunately a lot of people who dabble in scientific matters cannot incorporate in their world view.
It is what one gets pounded on the head with when doing formal theory of mathematics, and absolutely essential for any scientific conclusions.
Anu (21:31:21) :
So yeah, if the Sun was brightening decade after decade after decade, that would certainly explain a big part of the planet warming decade after decade after decade.
But it isn’t, so it doesn’t.
Leif’s own research shows that solar activity increased from 1900 to 1960, with another peak in the 1980’s. This activity level has now dropped back to ~1900 levels again.
Along with the ~60 year cycles identified by Scafeta and many others, this provides a potentially viable explaination for terrestrial temperature change in the C20th, given an amplifying effect from cloud albedo.
So why are HIS (biased, propagandized and inaccurate) comments such as this
“…The two main assertions stated on the petition card were that there is no convincing scientific evidence that the human release of carbon dioxide and other gases is causing harmful atmospheric heating and climate change and that the U.S. government should reject the Kyoto Agreement and any other similar proposals. Arthur Robinson not only requested that recipients return the signed petition card, if they agreed with its assertions, but also arranged for the recipients to distribute petition packets to their colleagues. He also enabled other persons to obtain petition packets by simply requesting them through his website, and this procedure ultimately produced five percent of the returned petition cards. Thus, signed petitions were solicited in three different ways.
Although the website for the petition indicates that checks of credentials and identity were performed for signatories of the returned petitions, and invalid petitions were excluded, how the checks were performed is not described. Signed petition cards were accepted only if they came from persons who had “obtained formal educational degrees at the level of Bachelor of Science or higher in appropriate scientific fields”. …
— OK, so why discard the professional opinions of 32,000 (plus!) professionals in engineering, science, weather and statistics – while blindly accepting the (biased and proven worng) opnions of less than 50 “scientists” who are getting 80 billion in public funds and research – plus many hundred thousands in personal (!) monies – to promote THEIR view of global warming on the economies of the world.
It is THOSE 50 “scientists” who need be scrutinized, because THEY have the motives, methods, means, and determination to invoke their OPINIONS and linear forecasts on 5 billion others.
Guilty of fraud? Circumstantial evidence says “Yes.”
Actually guilty? Well, we (the AGW alarmists) know they have proved the degree of of their greed, pride, desire for power, and sense of “holier than thou” fervor that “excuses all crimes” – while (you!) deride 32,000 signatures because they are not “randomly selected” like a “poll” of the public masses would indicate.