New Scafetta paper – his celestial model outperforms GISS

I see, astrology predicts climate.

As a forced oscillatory system, what makes climate formidably complex is the large number of periodic forcings of different magnitude and nature. Is climate simply passive to all these forcings? In that case, unweaving and analysing the forcing components would be complex enough. But what if the system is a “reactive medium” such that periodic forcing results in nonlinear pattern formation, i.e. new emergent and intrinsic oscillations with periodicities completely different from (although still ultimately caused by) the external periodic forcings? i.e. if it behaved like a reaction-diffusion system of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky or Brusselator type? In such a case, you might have a reasonable chance of modeling it if there was just one (or maybe 2) periodic forcing frequencies. But dozens of different periodic forcings? The resultant complexity could be described – adapting a Churchill quote, as “dynamic chaos inside a bifurcating cascade wrapped up in a non-equilibrium pattern landscape”. Or alternatively .. a “dog’s breakfast”.

Nicola Scaffeta: Outperforming the GISS Model E is easy. Does your celestial model outperform a simple integral (a running total) of NINO3.4 SST anomalies at reproducing the Global Temperature Anomaly curve?
http://i39.tinypic.com/2w2213k.jpg
Discussed here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/reproducing-global-temperature.html

Eric Gisin says:
June 4, 2010 at 2:01 pm
I see, astrology predicts climate.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

I’m very interested in the work of Scafetta. I’m not interested in rocking the boat unnecessarily. I’m concerned, though, that he’s previously been accused (by Gavin?) of refusing to “show his workings”. If I’m to berate CRU et al for data and methodology concealment, I feel I must hold Nicola Scafetta to the same.
Could someone/anyone update me on the current state of play regarding Scafetta’s willingness to share his data/methods? Or was the whole thing just more fiction from RC in the first instance? I’d be delighted to have my concerns allayed in this respect.

I appreciate that the IPCC and GISS calculations are flawed. However, on from this, it would be interesting to know what are the causal affinities between celestial (and lunar) forcings and climatic effects. Since, it is said, that at least 60% of the warming since the 1970’s are attributable to celestial forcings, then it can reasonably be concluded that 40% are climatic feedbacks from celestial/lunar forcings, mainly from oceans, which govern the air temperature?

Paradoxical that on the one hand the GISS model, which is based on the mechanism that climate oscillations are driven mainly by GHG, produces a poor fit to reality. On the other hand, an empirical model based on celestial mechanics, but with no proposed strong physical mechanism, does give a good fit!
Perhaps the physical cause is lots of little nudges to our chaotic, non-linear climate from many different overlapping quasi-cycles which reinforce or cancel each other and so produce the climate oscillations we observe. I suspect that we know some of the things which cause some of the nudges, but I suspect there are many others that are unknown to climate science at this moment in time.
Science in general is still very bad at getting to grips with complex systems which are driven by deterministic chaos. Although difficult, this needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

Mod: My post disappeared?
[Rescued: RT – Mod]

Hans Henrik Hansen said on June 4, 2010 at 2:38 pm:

“Dr. Nicolas Scafetta writes…” – his (correct) name appears to be: Nicola Scafetta! 🙂
REPLY: Yep, I know too many people named Nicolas. Thanks for catching my error. -A

Just think of him as a pioneering out-of-the-box against-the-establishment scientific thinker like Nikola Tesla. In a good way.

SimonH says:
June 4, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Could someone/anyone update me on the current state of play regarding Scafetta’s willingness to share his data/methods? Or was the whole thing just more fiction from RC in the first instance? I’d be delighted to have my concerns allayed in this respect.
I am not trying to answer for Dr. Scafetta but the data he is speaking of IS the JPL Horizons system. If Gavin wants the data, he, as anyone else, can go get all they want. Or, if Gavin has a few years on his hands he can get a very, very good integrator, self written generally proves the most accurate, and integrate the solar system, the sun, planets, and at least the largest five to nine asteroids. Integrate and check your accuracy against known occultations of stars, planets, asteroids on record to whatever accuracy he wishes. Have at it Gavin.
The rest is pure mathematics best I can tell unless Gavin can point a better finger. If I can do it, Gavin can do it, it only takes his time to understand.
Eric Gisin says:
June 4, 2010 at 2:01 pm
I see, astrology predicts climate.
Boy, I can tell you are not a scientist. This has to do with astronomy, not astrology.

@ steven mosher says: June 4, 2010 at 3:47 pm
“WRT cycles in GCMs. whatever natural cycles a GCM produces are almost always guaranteed to be somewhat out of phase with the observational record. Spinning up a GCM to a equilibrium ( no drift ) state will make reproducing short time scale processes/cycles difficult, if not impossible.”
This is an excuse for the GCMs being worthless.
“4. Because of #3, your best bet is probably to take an ensemble of results that is larger than the few runs that ModelE does.”
Why would the results be different each time? What in “climate physics” is random?

CARSTEN..
“Correlations are just correlations”
Correlations which prove to have predictive power have an underlying cause worth discovering, don’t you think?

Meanwhile Hathaway has once again reviewed his SC24 prediction, now down to 65 SSN.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml
He is also not scared to predict a Dalton-like minimum, the planetary cycles are showing exactly that. These predictions have been in place for years, it is only now that the other side of solar science is beginning to come on board (they have no choice)

James Sexton says:
June 4, 2010 at 5:28 pm
I’d say its early yet for any definitive statements, but it is indeed interesting. In spite of Mr. Mosher’s snide tone, he raises a good question, “What does this ” model” retrodict for the MWP?” I’d like to see an answer for that, also.
I think there is a distinction between internal climate cycles and solar grand minima. The MWP is a period without grand minima. The planetary cycles also synchronize with this rare event.

The physical mechanisms that would explain this result are
still unknown. Perhaps the four jovian planets modulate solar
activity via gravitational and magnetic forces that cause tidal and
angular momentum stresses on the Sun and its heliosphere.

It has seemed to me like a plausible idea that solar system gravitational forces could produce tidal stress in the sun producing variations in the sun’s behavior. Who would think that the moon could produce such a tidal variation in the earth’s oceans without actually having seen the result? The relative position of the sun and moon will also produce differences in the tidal cycles.
What are the arguments against these forces being present for the sun in a way which will affect solar behavior and output in any substantial way?

Carsten Arnholm, Norway, June 4, 2010 at 3:32 pm, says:

The Sun is also in free fall and feels no forces anyway, as Leif has explained many times.

I’m not sure I understand. The Earth is also in free fall; yet the Moon — which is likewise in free fall — causes tides. It would seem obvious to me that the Sun’s plasma would be affected in some way by the gravitational forces of its satellites, no?

After 6000 years of Astrology/Astronomy predicting weather over months, years, decades and centuries there are some that think this might have some basis in fact.
We don’t need climate computer models, we have the Farmer’s Almanac. 🙂

Carsten again:

Correlations are just correlations.

Ahh, but there are correlations and correlations —
Svensmark & Shaviv — solar wind/cosmic ray flux, all periods from months to millions of years
Scafetta — planetary motion, presumably affecting solar activity, 150 years in detail
Hansen & The Team — CO2-driven warming, 25 years at the end of the 20th Century, and the model is wrong even for Venus
Steven Mosher asserts:

People need to decide if they want to throw out the temperature record or use it.

The problem is “compared to what?” Even though it has been diddled in unknown ways, HadCRUT (with its American friends) is the only available “global” record spanning long enough to clearly identify low-frequency cycles. There are lots of regional possibilities, and good proxy reconstructions (e.g. Loehle), but inherent uncertainty makes them dicey for clear decade-scale cyclic analysis.
In fact, we won’t really have any reliable data for medium-term analysis until around 2100, when scientists freezing in their offices because of cap-and-tax will have a century of ARGO and satellite data to play with. Until then, Dr. S and everybody else will have to wing it with the best data at hand, however squirrelly it may be.

There’s no time to waste beating around the bush with niceties, so:
2 Criticisms:
1) Geographic breakdowns need a rework reflective of Earth’s features. Examples: (a) Arctic drainage basin and (b) Southern Ocean (60°S – 90°S) & Southeast Pacific Ocean (160°W – 70°W, 45°S – 90°S).
2) Consider select elements (relevant to the terrestrial hydrologic cycle & more generally the relative motions of Earth’s shells) of the works of Russian scientist Yu.V. Barkin. Consider the way lunisolar harmonics fold spatiotemporally (on a nonuniform, non-spherical, heterogeneous, asymmetric Earth) and beware confounding.
Cautionary Note: The lack of additional criticism should not be interpreted as a blanket endorsement of everything else in the paper. I have simply chosen to target strategically.
Recommended to ALL:
Read Scafetta’s “Appendix A. Collective synchronization of coupled oscillators”.
Next steps:
Considering the role of:
1) seasons.
2) discreteness (as opposed to continuously-varying oscillations).
Elaboration:
Bear in mind that as oscillations of similar wavelength “slip” past one another, the effect will be switch-like &/or seasonal for some types of phenomena, for example those involving precipitation-temperature-cloud relations. (Clarification: This has nothing to do with GCRs! It’s way simpler than that.)
Remember the significance of the Humboldt current & the “spinning hub” (Antarctic Circumpolar Wave (ACW) & Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC)). Keep in mind Antarctic Bottom Water (ABW) and relations between Antarctic ice specific mass and & Southern Ocean SST.
The seasonal continental swings of extreme-NH are only intermittently strongly coupled to equatorial patterns like ENSO – for example during the intense warming that began in the late 80s.
Apparent amplification of lunisolar harmonic superposition appears to vary with the stark contrast of: continental (Arctic/NH) vs. maritime (Antarctic/deep-SH), the former of which hi-jacks patterns north of 45°South due to its amplitude.
Maritime climates are damped, so wild oscillations of the NH (which is largely continental) play an exaggerated role in masking important global patterns in many standard summaries. Perhaps we need to move towards physically-weighted summaries that are mindful of continental/maritime contrasts, so as to highlight globally heavy (oceanic) patterns that are getting swamped by light (air) patterns in mainstream conventional summaries.
In short:
Aggregation criteria do affect spatiotemporal pattern.

For those who keep looking for one grand answer. There is no ‘one’ answer. No ‘one’ factor is more correct than another (however, some are incorrect) and some factors have more influence than others, physics applied. This paper points out one factor in a much more complex solution.
Do El Nino(s), and PDO oscillations and such still occur and influence while factors such as solar influence is occurring? To myself, there is no reason to think they do not always occur in tandem along with the other many factors that are always occurring at the same instance in time, positively or negatively and sometimes not at all. When the factors come in synch and coincide or interfere you get greater than normal maxima and minima of temperatures, ice melt, sea level, etc from aligned sine forms of these oscillating factors than if you look at each one at a time.
Dr. Scafetta and others merely point out other factors whose magnitude of influence are still not fully understood on the solar system scale. Understanding all of these factors is critical to truly understand what has occurred in climate since mankind grew up in the electronic / space / urbanization era, each has it’s positive and negative imprint on the data measurements.
Some factor I lean on, in order, UHI and thermometer placement/location (~0.6ºC), solar influence (~0.3ºC), natural global oscillations (AO, NAO, PDO, PNA, AAO, ENSO, currents, trade winds, etc.), they average out over time, then comes the weather (the rest deviation). All of these will influence sea temperatures at various levels, air temperatures at various levels, and of coarse, polar ice formation and melting, they are the effects.
We are miles and miles from understanding this.
And, no, I have never read IPCC’s reports, I actively protect my mind from perceived bad influences. That’s just my take on the matter.

The layman’s description (the only one I understand) of how scientists are discovering exo-planets involves those planets orbits producing a ‘wobble’ in their star’s path which can be detected. Then if we’re lucky they can observe a transit. If so, then our gas giants would have some observable effect on our sun’s output, when observed from a few lights year away.
It seems possible that the planets have some effect on the sun and anything between them and the sun. How big an influence? I couldn’t guess.
Surely the UN is working on this, right? Maybe the Jovians will buy our carbon credits?

Found an interesting paper in Scafetta’s references:
Solomon, S.; Rosenlof, K.; Portmann, R; Daniel, J.; Davis, S.; Sanford, T.; & Plattner, G.-K. (2010). Contributions of stratospheric water vapor to decadal changes in the rate of global warming. Science Express 327, 1219-1223.
http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~plattner/papers/solomon10sci_express.pdf
See specifically:
1) paragraph 2 on p.2,
2) paragraph 4 on p.3, &
3) the very last paragraph of the article.
Note how many questions they raise. They certainly underscore uncertainty.

It’s good that more and more people are finally re- discovering the wheel.It has been obvious for many years that solar “activity ” ( first best measured by solar magnetic field strength and then secondarily by sunspots – TSI ) combined with lunar declination cycles and in the longer term the Milankovitch orbital cycles are the chief controls on earths climate. The changes in solar activity clearly relate to the Jupiter – Saturn orbits and the changes in the rate of change solar angular momentum (Torque) as it orbits the barycenter. This causes torsion in the sun which effects solar tides (particularly horizontal forces) and also electromagnetic effects. It has been fashionable for the establishment astrophysicists to belittle Landscheidt so I refer everyone to Fairbridge and Sanders who published extensively on the subject in the 80’s and 90’s. Y’all might wish to check their paper pp446 – 471 in Climate History,Periodicity andPredictability Rampino et al eds. Van Nostrand 1987 There is also about a 2000 paper bibliography in the same book. A lot of this work can be traced back to Paul Jose’s 1965 paper on Suns Motion and Sunspots ( Astronomical Journal)
Perhaps the chief control on decadal and millenial scales will eventually be seen to be changes in earths albedo caused by clouds – related to cosmic rays as per Svensmark.
The effect of Anthropogenic CO2 can’t even be calculated until we better understand the natural climate controls . The whole AGW scare is a mass delusion promoted for political ends – fortunately most average people know that it is cooler in the shade than in the sun – a fact which has escaped the IPCC ” scientists”.

We’ve criticized climate models when they adjust numerous parameters to “fit” historical data, and then claim that the “tuned” model is predictive.
Scarfetta is basically doing the same thing–with a number of periodic functions and adjusted “influence” parameters (fudge factors), you can basically closely fit any known function. If I read him right, he’s saying if we throw all these periodic functions into a mix we can adjust “amplitude” parameters so that 60% of the trend in temperature data is accounted for by the fit. That’s just basic Fourier Synthesis. You can make it fit anything.
Without some more definitive hint of a causal mechanism, all this does is show how weak the GISS model is, also.

A most interesting Grande Climate Theory based on Astronomy.

O/T but related to the 172 yr. bi-secular cycle:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/TempGr/SC24vs13_14.GIF
Finally got enough Spot Area data from Debrecen to make comparison with Greenwich data.
I’ll be working on this to include peak to peak for SC13 & 14, as well as centering on minimum times.

Seems a little “thin” to me. But maybe upcoming global cooling has more to do with the recent upsurge in the number of high seas pirates.

anna v wrote: “[…] the moon cycles have been largely ( and wrongly imo) ignored in climate modeling.”
Agree.
Scafetta cites Tsonis et al. (2007) [which is well-known at WUWT] and:
Strogatz, S.H. (2009). Exploring complex networks. Nature 410, 268-276.
http://www.bongard.ch/unikrems/Dokumente/Online-Dokus/network3.pdf
From that article, notes on collective synchronization:
“In the absence of coupling, each oscillator would settle onto its limit cycle (circle) and rotate at its natural frequency. However, here all the oscillators are also pulled towards the mean field that they generate collectively (shown as an asterisk at the centre of the population).”
“Starting from a random initial condition, the oscillators self-organize by collapsing their amplitudes; then they sort their phases so that the fastest oscillators are in the lead. Ultimately they all rotate as a synchronized pack, with locked amplitudes and phases.” (like geese)
“[…] when the coupling is small compared to the spread of natural frequencies, the system behaves incoherently, with each oscillator running at its natural frequency. As the coupling is increased, the incoherence persists until a certain threshold is crossed — then a small cluster of oscillators suddenly ‘freezes’ into synchrony. For still greater coupling, all the oscillators become locked in phase and amplitude (Fig. 2)”
“[…] coupling strength K […]” “[…] a desynchronized group whose natural frequencies lie in the tails of the distribution […] and are too extreme to be entrained. With further increases in K, more and more oscillators are recruited into the synchronized group […]”

Michael D Smith says:
June 4, 2010 at 6:45 pm
I still don’t understand the hang-ups about theories describing tidal forces acting upon a fluid object (barycentrics). It seems perfectly logical to me that the object would enjoy a higher rotation rate and less frictional losses when spinning about its gravitational center when its own center is near tidal center than when being nudged in one direction or another due to tidal forces. It’s intuitively clear as a bell.
I do understand difficulty in translating that to solar output, field strength, or whatever with a well defined theory given such a chaotic input, lag, etc, but when so many make reasonably clear correlations with other celestial objects, I don’t see a major issue. In other words, it’s not a huge stumbling block for me to see correlation, suppose there must causation of some sort, and still be at a loss for root cause. Given enough evidence of correlation, it only means we’re incapable of discerning / measuring the core factors that give rise to causation. I think that’s interesting as hell, even if we can’t ascribe direct links to causation. I don’t have a major problem accepting that we’re not smart enough to understand every link between observation and root cause. More knowledge and theory required to bridge the gap. no problem.
==========================
Just re-posting this because it deserves to be re-posted.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

I would like to second what anna v (June 4, 2010 at 9:50 pm) has said.
As many other commenters have pointed out, there’s nothing wrong with ‘playing with numbers’. It might eventually lead to something useful. On the other hand, trying to provide meaningful descriptions in terms of periodic functions that have no theoretical underpinnings is fraught with the possibility of mis-assigned causation.
Here is a link to a device called a Parametric Pendulum. It is a ball at the end of a thin rod, hung up on a wall, and allowed to swing back and forth. If that’s all you do, it’s very boring and predictable. If you modify it just a little, however, you can produce hugely complicated and unpredictable behaviour. In the demonstration at the link, the modification is to make the suspension point of the pendulum move up and down at a fixed rate. There are two selectable ‘system parameters’ and two ‘initial conditions’ that you can set, but there are an essentially infinite number of output patterns, some of them radically different, and with little or no apparent connection to the two simple underlying ‘drivers’.
Now imagine that instead of specifying the system and watching what it does, you observe what it does and then try to describe what’s causing it. (You aren’t allowed to see the device itself, just the output of the graphs). Then imagine that Jim Hansen is providing your graphs.
/dr.bill

So I’m curious about this. I haven’t read the paper and it’s probably way over my head.
Is there any reason why this couldn’t be a player in the total game.
It’s seeming more and more to me that global climate change seems to be like a baseball team of players. Different things have been players at different times. Which I think is why I have such a hard time believing in any anthropogenic contribution.
In a simple way for us newer to this and not packed with 5 feet of scientific abbreviations behind our name.. Is this paper trying to include the movements, astral spew of matter, oddities in orbit and shed radiation from different directions and different planetary bodies as one of many causes of global climate change?
Like for instance on a simple comparison earth’s precession mixed with orbital changes causes different temperature and climate change patterns every so many thousand years?
I guess I’m not understanding why this wouldn’t be considered as a possible contributor among several? Such as PDO and Volcanic eruptions, greenhouse gases affecting the ocean and vice versa, sunspots and other forms of sun activity all working togethers?
I would certainly not say this is the only causal factor of warming but it seems like it would be a good contender as a contributor among other factors. Isn’t that the whole idea behind being a skeptic in that we don’t believe that man is the sole cause of current climate change which currently is neither warming or global in nature?

Paul Vaughan says:
June 4, 2010 at 10:28 pm
“Starting from a random initial condition, the oscillators self-organize by collapsing their amplitudes; then they sort their phases so that the fastest oscillators are in the lead. Ultimately they all rotate as a synchronized pack, with locked amplitudes and phases.” (like geese)
A good demonstration

and it happens because of conservation of momentum, and coupling through friction
This has been the standard explanation for the synchronization of the moon.
http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast161/Unit2/phases.html
The main and insurmountable problem is that the force of gravity is so weak that any synchronization takes millions and billions of years and not decades and centuries as are the time scales of climate that are being discussed.

stevengoddard says:
June 4, 2010 at 2:00 pm
No matter what the climate does, GISS will probably continue to show increasing temperatures. Eventually they may have only one station left (in a parking lot) and will have to extrapolate the rest of the planet on 12,000 mile smoothing.
You neglected to mention that the remaining station will have an idling vehicle parked next to it in order to ‘maintain’ the elevated temps.
:o)

Nicola Scafetta is to be congratulated for getting his interesting work into a peer reviewed journal. His hard work will make it easier for others who are investigating this complex phenomenon from an astronomical perspective to get their ideas into print. I tip my hat to you Prof. Nicola Scafetta – a true pioneer.
I will be publishing two papers supporting at least some Prof. Scafetta’s work. One shows direct evidence of lunar tidal influences on the El nino/La Nina ENSO phenomenon, while the second shows the link between the Lunar tidal varaiations and planetary wide standing-wave patterns in large scale sea surface temperature anomalies. Both of these papers show that factors external to the Earth play an
important role in decadal to centenial climate variations in the Earth’s climate.

For those who want to play around with the dates of planetary alignments, this website is interesting: http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Solar
An extensive planetary alignment occurred in April, 1306 A.D.
The website accepts negative numbers for years B.C. (or B.C.E. for those who prefer that nomenclature).

I wonder how many forced oscillators we could find in the solar system and near galaxy which. over billions of years, have become entrained by some type of coupling? What effect would a black swan event have as it rippled through this delicately balanced system?
Like a stone thrown into a pond, the event would set up a series of ripples, the effects of which would decrease the further you went from the origin. Due to the magnitude of the system it would probably be perturbed by a further event before it had time to settle down. More importantly because the system is driven by deterministic chaos, which exhibits sensitivity to initial conditions, even bodies at the periphery of the event would be effected.
No answers here, just more questions!

@tallbloke June 4, 2010 at 4:47 pm

Leif is wrong. It’s one of his Newtonian thought experiments which fails to take acoount of the fact that the sun is not a rigid point like object.

Leif has discussed tides at length. Tides on the Sun are very small indeed. Which other effects are you thinking of?

@Ed_B June 4, 2010 at 5:13 pm

CARSTEN..
“Correlations are just correlations”
Correlations which prove to have predictive power have an underlying cause worth discovering, don’t you think?

I agree that establishing mathematical correlations can be very useful in assisting pure intuition wrt. which paths of investigation to follow. However, if correlations are not backed up by physical mechanisms to explain them, they are just correlations that may be spurious or indicative of some other physical mechanism.
For example, Al Gore showed apparent correlation between CO2 and temperature proxies in his movie, which was used to argue that CO2 was the cause of the temperature shifts. What wasn’t mentioned was that the temperature shifts happened years before the changes in CO2 concentration. He had a correlation, but it didn’t prove anything wrt. his proposed mechanism.

@ Stephen Wilde says: June 4, 2010 at 8:07 pm: “Dr. Scafetta has gone well beyond the principle known as Occam’s Razor or for those of a less scientific bent ‘Keep it simple,stupid’.”
My preferred version is ‘Keep it simple, but don’t be stupid.’

@ Craig Goodrich June 4, 2010 at 6:05 pm

Carsten Arnholm, Norway, June 4, 2010 at 3:32 pm, says:
The Sun is also in free fall and feels no forces anyway, as Leif has explained many times.

I’m not sure I understand. The Earth is also in free fall; yet the Moon — which is likewise in free fall — causes tides. It would seem obvious to me that the Sun’s plasma would be affected in some way by the gravitational forces of its satellites, no?

True. Tidal forces exist. However they are exceedingly small on the surface of the Sun, in the order of submillimeters if my memory serves me. Compared to the size and mass of the Sun, these effects are completely negligible.

tallbloke says:
June 5, 2010 at 2:41 am
anna v says:
June 4, 2010 at 11:59 pm
The main and insurmountable problem is that the force of gravity is so weak that any synchronization takes millions and billions of years and not decades and centuries as are the time scales of climate that are being discussed.
What about the force which is 24 million billion (whatever the right number is for electromagnetism) times stronger than gravity.
Scafetta specifically includes that force in his hypothesis. Why are you ignoring it?
I am not ignoring it, I am saying that there is not enough energy density in the interstellar and interplanetary electro/magnetic fields to be able to affect anything directly in the sense of synchronization. In any case they would fall in the same category as gravity: too weak and not enough energy available to change anything in the decades and century one is observing the climate. In addition they are variable and not stable in long term as gravity wells are.
It is the energy that is missing, not the imagination.
Magnetic fields could play an amplification role, as in the Galactic Cosmic Rays hypothesis still to be demonstrated, changing albedo .

Abdusamatov
http://www.giurfa.com/abdusamatov2.pdf
Charvatova
http://www.ann-geophys.net/18/399/2000/angeo-18-399-2000.pdf

jinki says:(June 4, 2010 at 5:36 pm)
“Meanwhile Hathaway has once again reviewed his SC24 prediction, now down to 65 SSN.”
Dr S has predicted this from the start (I think 70 was his max) but was opposed and overruled by Hathaway.

tallbloke says:
June 4, 2010 at 4:34 pm
I agree. But then I have had the privilege of seeing a few demonstrations by Ulric Lyons of his theory which contains some parallel to Nicola’s.
The ensuing, relentless exasperation (mostly mine, because I saw how explosive this was to the climatologist fraternity before he did) at the time it takes to plug all the holes, that we all know will need to be waterproof before publication, as the entire establishment will go mental-nuts-doo-lalley when they see it, and the continuous admiration I have for his methodology, insight and mathematical powers only add to my mirth.
I have a little chuckle to myself when I see formerly respected scientists and others snorting “astrology”, “numerology”, “rev up your orreries” and such.
Ulric’s elegant, independently repeatable, predictive system is no stranger to ridicule. At least no-one gets killed for failing at weather prediction now-a-days. Not so in more “primitive” times when the planets were attributed signs such as hot, cold, windy, wet etc and the local seer could make or break an entire comunity.
He will have the last laugh however, as the system is eminently easy to explain, instantly graspable and intuitively remarkable. “Eureka” does not do credit to the back-of-the-neck hair-standing, goggle-eyed amazement and outright shock that people experience when he reveals the core of the theory with a few diagrams and some historical hindcasting. (Yes, I do know the differences between hypothesis, theory and correlation)
I feel he should have published a while back for two reasons; The climate “debate” (or lack thereof) has gone on too long and this theory completely, utterly and comprehensively destroys AGW (let alone all the other acronymodious junk) and; The fury directed at his work by the establishment would be deflected and defused by the mass of people, all too happy to puncture the pompous, who would help to plug the holes when they see how easy it is to prove the fundamental heart of the discovery.
I said to him 2 years ago that he should publish and tour the lecture circuits as he refined it. He is inclined to keep tweaking the periphery until it is ironclad.
Whichever, I am constantly amused by the invested.
We will all have a good laugh about this, sooner rather than later.

The Milankovitch cycles are caused by gravitational/tidal interactions of the Moon, Sun, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn.
If one thinks of the energy it takes to change the orbit and tilt of the Earth, the energy in the climate system is just a tiny, tiny fraction of that.
The Milankovitch cycles operate on long time scales but a force like this will also have smaller timescale influences.
There are certainly cycles in the climate, one just needs to tie this all together to show how the mechanism/forces actually impact the climate. For example, if you slow-down the Pacific equatorial current, you will get more El Ninos and there will be a slight warming. If you slow-down the Atlantic Meridional Circulation slightly, you will get more sea ice and there will be a slight cooling. If you change the average cloudiness of the Earth …

Just how difficult would it be to do a correlation of these cyclic phenomena with the ice core data?
What happens around Maunder minimum time?
Is there a correlation with sunspot cycles since 1715?
How about the MWP (according to some, hypothetical; according to others, documented by archaeology)?
Given the ephemeris data from JPL, running SCMSS back 4000 or 5000 years should be relatively straightforward.
How does this periodic data fit with the known periodicities in the orbit of the Earth: the perihelion progression, the known variation in the axial tilt, the known variations in the eccentricity of the orbit, and so on?
Always remember: Semmelweis and Pasteur were fools until they were proven right.
And all Semmelweis had to go on was data.
That is a pretty strong Chi square to be random.

Steven Mosher
” People need to decide if they want to throw out the temperature record or use it. ”
If I go out into the ocean on a rubber raft and try to measure wave height I will get one result, if I try to measure wave height from an ocean liner I will certainly get a different result.
Both sets of measurements are likely to show the same period between waves.

“It is found that at least 60\% of the global warming observed since 1970 has been induced by the combined effect of the above natural climate oscillations.”
The problem of course, is the difference between the “observed” warming and the actual warming. Once you remove the effects of UHI, station siting and station dropout problems, not to mention general hanky panky with the data by Mann et al, it is probably close to 100% natural.
Dr. Gray provided a good rundown of the problems here: http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=1
That was before Climategate, of course.

Leif Svalgaard seems always to assume that the TSI is the best measure of solar actity as far as climate is concerned.This is not so. On decadal and millenial time scales the solar magnetic field strength is a much better climate indicator as a measure of cloud cover via changes in the cosmic ray flux and also as an indicator of energy transfer via CMEs, solar flares etc. Whats more the 10Be record provides a handy proxy for measurement in the geological record and for correlation with climate data.
On longer time scales the TSI – Northern Hemisphere insolation influence is more obvious in the well documented Milankovitch cycles.
The change in solar angular momentum and the amount of solar torsion is easily conceptualised by looking at plots of the changing radius of curvature of the suns orbit about the barycenter.

Mosher and Lubos posts sum up pretty well what to think of this paper.

noaaprogrammer says:
June 4, 2010 at 10:28 pm
“…and meanwhile NASA is again trying to sensationalize perhaps the weakest solar cycle in a hundred years: “…The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity…
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/04jun_swef/
This paragraph from the NASA item seems rather strange? :-
“SDO (the Solar Dynamics Observatory) is the newest addition to NASA’s fleet. Just launched in February, it is able to photograph solar active regions with unprecedented spectral, temporal and spatial resolution. Researchers can now study eruptions in exquisite detail, raising hopes that they will learn how flares work and how to predict them. SDO also monitors the sun’s extreme UV output, which controls the response of Earth’s atmosphere to solar variability.”
Is this a hint about the Earth’s missing climate ‘solar switch’, or something else ???

If you want to see a USA national weather forecast with daily maps generated 2 and a half years ago for the next four years, using a very similar method. They are available free for the looking at;
http://www.aerology.com/national.aspx
These maps do better than the NWS three days out, when the outer planets do not interfere with the lunar declinational tides, basic background cyclic patterns. Which right now will be until mid August 2010 when Uranus, Neptune, and Jupiter, all have a go at creating a surge of hurricane production September and October of 2010.
My own ideas on how the medium term (50 to 60 year) driving forces of the Moon and outer planets, affect the weather and climate, can be found in the research area of the site.

Are we doomed? Dr. S. has modulated his cycles onto a parabola. The temperature will keep on increasing at an ever accelerating rate. We’re all (OK, our great grandchildren) going to fry.
What am I missing?

One refinement as an addendum to Dr. Scafetta’s paper would be to
measure the variation in tidal “pull” when either the Earth or the Moon
are aligned so one or the other is eclipsing Jupiter or combinations of
the gas giant trio (Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune) when they’re in the same
quadrant relative to this particular earth/moon alignment.
However, finding anyone with the money, the skills, or the will to
do such studies is doubtful. Worse, some would consider authoring
a paper on the subject a career killer in astrophysics or solar studies.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
The energy utilized in large body water tides is fairly well understood.
Less so is the tidal influence on ground water. The least studied and
possibly most influential for both gravitational and magnetic effects
are superficial and subsurface land tides.
As the earth’s continents slide around and the equator (and the equitorial
bulge) migrate in conjuction with axial tilt and procession, yet another
set of mutli-millenial variables are added to the length of day calculations.
The slight decoupling of Northern and Southern hemispheric temperatures
on a decadal or century scale that can’t be explained by GISS, Hadley or IPCC
models may have less to do with errors introduced by an urban heat island
(UHI) effect (McKitrick and Michaels, 2007; McKitrick, 2010) and
more to do with the volume of surface land mass in the Northen Hemisphere,
it’s vegitation, and albedo compared to the predominace of surface water
mass in the South.
For those wondering about observations and predictions concerning the
current solar cycle, please remember that David Hathaway, Leif Svalgaard,
et al, are predicting the monthly sunspot number (SSN)
to be over 60. For June, 2010, the spot number was 8.8.
See:
http://sidc.oma.be/products/ri_hemispheric/
Dave Hathaway hasn’t really commented on planetary gravitational/magnetic
influences on water/earth tides or sunspot numbers and solar activity.
Leif Svalgaard has, in the negative, repeatedly. See:
http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1127

The temperature will keep on increasing at an ever accelerating rate. We’re all (OK, our great grandchildren) going to fry.
What am I missing?
Newton’s first law of motion: A body continues in a state of rest or motion in a straight line at a constant speed unless made to change state by forces acting upon it.
If there were no forces acting upon climate, the 1st extreme that came along would stick. Earth has varied over geologic time periods, as if in a balance. Go out of the solar system, out of the galaxy and on to the Super Clusters of Galaxies and the expansion of the Universe. Should there be no limit to the size of the Super Clusters and the Compact Dominant monster galaxies at their cores? Should there be an upper limit to their Super-Massive Black Holes? There appears to be a good reason why these SuperCluster cores have stopped forming new stars: the temperature of the gas surrounding them has gone too high to allow condensation of new stars.
Macrocosm might be related to microcosm. If an old galaxy were to be expelled from the SuperCluster core region, it would enter cooler regions and could re-start star condensation/formation.
The Milky Way is laminated as to it’s dust/gas layers. We know this from surveys which have detected high-latitude clouds in the galaxy. How the Sun (or any star) is temporarily affected upon passage though these varying layers is an unknown, but the Sun does pass through them. It’s not a simple matter of one and only one gradient of density when it comes to the galactic plane.
Bottom line: You are not alone in asking “What am I missing?”.

vukcevic wrote:
” […] http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm but even that needs definition of the transfer mechanism, which I am pondering at the moment.”
Barkin has written insightfully about this. I would schedule a full day to sift through his works. The bits that are relevant to terrestrial climate are buried as paragraphs here-&-there in his many, many publications (which primarily address peripherally-related topics). I don’t think you will be disappointed if you make the effort. Barkin’s insights are both simple & powerful. You may quickly see how 36 & 90 year oscillations derived from different (but harmonically related) phenomena (perhaps entrained through different spatial pathways) might combine to produce the ‘illusion’ of some of the (perhaps ephemeral) “60 year” oscillations (north of 45°S [& this is absolutely key]) to which you have drawn attention. [Bear in mind north/south continental/maritime asymmetry, including its seasonal variation.] Based on M. Mann’s paper on ENSO/volcano relations, I would say Barkin’s knowledge is one of the key blindspots holding Mann back from an influential pivot & forward-lunge that could change the whole climate discussion.

JDN wrote:
“Nikola:
Please consider putting together a scientific presentation of your work for youtube. The paper is a problem to read. I would be making assumptions just in order to understand your terminology and graphs. I really think you need to present something like this live.
-JDN”
The links here http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/60yearCycles.htm will lead you to here http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/V_Sun_SSB_60a.htm , where you will find that Dr. Scafetta delivered a video more than a year ago.
[Note to anyone who may have bookmarked the link to Scafetta’s video last year: The host site changed the URL – I provide a link to the updated URL.]

Tenuc wrote [about disruptions of collectively coupled oscillators]: “No answers here, just more questions!”
…and damn good ones!!
I imagine that such disruptions are ongoing – and blinding for many investigators. It was precisely the background harmonies that immediately drew my interest as soon as I got involved, as I’ve noted in the intro here http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/Confounding.htm .

tallbloke says:
June 5, 2010 at 1:34 am
The vertical tides (caused by the planets on the sun) are small, just as the vertical tide caused by the moon on the earth is small, but the horizontal tides are huge in comparison, and they are the ones which cause much more tidal motion, same as those caused by the moon here on earth.
Even tiny Mercury induces horizontal tides of hundreds of kilometers on the suns surface. Leif’s 1mm tide is a red herring.

What is your reference for “horizontal tides of hundreds of kilometers on the suns surface”? I have never heard about it and would like to know.

rogerL wrote: “[…] and it would be better to have a causal mechanism. But when two phenomena are correlated then either there is a (perhaps undiscovered) causal relation between them or there is a third (perhaps undiscovered) phenomenon driving them both.”
While there are other possibilities, it is very good to see so many folks explicitly drawing attention to confounding.
Indeed, statistical methods are independent of physics. I will take this opportunity to thank the physicists in this community for the comments which they have shared during the past 16 months, which have been instrumental in influencing (a) the direction of my knowledge-gathering activities and (b) the evolution of my speculation & interpretations.

anna v wrote:
“Now synchronization is another story.
I could entertain the idea that somehow over the billions of years the fluid motions of the sun may have been modulated by all the gravitational bodies going around it, in the same way that the moon ended up looking with the same face on the earth. In that case, planetary motions and sun energy swirlings could have a similar frequency analysis spectrum and be correlated, not because of causation in the present, but because they are two giant clocks that have become synchronous over untold millenia.
(This would for example account for the 11 year coincidence.)
But this is just a hypothesis. […] we have to wait for a verified solid model of the sun behavior as well as a better gauge of climate than global temperature, which is a cousin four times removed from the energy of the system.”
I agree, with the exception of the bit which I have omitted (“[…]”).
I will support the dismissal of the 11 year coincidence as possibly a fossil, in part because of what I learned from pursuing the following:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/VaughanPL2009_11.1aCycleSSD.htm
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/SunspotsJEV.htm
I’ve never bothered tidying up the loose ends of those investigations for the simple reason that it would not be worth the effort. I learned all I needed to know: There is *loose* coincidence with J+N. Anna’s speculation is interesting, in part because if there is anything (physical) to her speculation it might help explain why the phase-concordance appears so loose.

Kind words Ninderthana, but readers should be aware that I changed my position quite fundamentally in March 2010. One will note the sharp change, for example, here: http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/what-is-the-solar-planetary-theory/ .
–
Leif wrote: “It looks to me that you are confounding and conflating a lot of unrelated things.”
Perhaps you are skeptical that I have truly changed my position? I will be more clear: I have changed my position.

I am very pleased to see wattsupwiththat publishing articles that support Landscheidts theories. I never understood why Anthony didn’t like people writing about Landscheidt theories? I am an agricultural scientist, I greatly admire Landscheidts ability to predict major weather events like el Nino events, the end of the ethiopian drought and the prediction about favourable rainfall continuing in the US midwest this decade. Its pretty obvious to me as an amateur climate scientist that there is a periodicity in the worlds temperature record. It seems there is no better explanation than it involves the rotation of the large planets as the data lines up too well. The exact mechanism of why the changes happen we don’t know. When I try to solve a problem I look for the best correlations and then look for possible mechanisms. A sound explanation of the actual mechanism(s) may not happen in the next decade, but lets not be skeptical of these interesting data set match ups because we can’t explain how they work.

I hate writing replies like this because I doubt they will receive serious consideration, but, I don’t think surface velocity is where to look for a gravitational effect.
The sun’s core is defined by a burn wave with a strong discontinuity, i.e. high density of helium on the inside and almost completely hydrogen on the outside of the burn wave. Basically, the sun has a ball of about four times the density of the surrounding environment sitting in its center. Any net gravitational force on the body of the sun will shift this core relative the the rest of the sun. Any shifting of this helium core will make more hydrogen available for reaction. I’m sure it will be more complicated to model, but, it’s obvious that there will be some influence. My point is that 20 m/s is nothing to a plasma whose temperature varies from 5000K to 100,000K. And since this idea of a shifting core is so obvious, I’m sure someone has already considered it. Why not give this idea equal time?

mathman says:
June 5, 2010 at 7:42 am
Just how difficult would it be to do a correlation of these cyclic phenomena with the ice core data?
Interglacials, Milankovitch Cycles, and Carbon Dioxide, Authors: Gerald E. Marsh
ice cores, seabed cores, and even speleo-whatchacallums!
i would love to see a whole post dedicated to just this paper. the bibliography alone is a treasure trove.

Mike says:
My preferred version is ‘Keep it simple, but don’t be stupid.’
Perhaps you should be following your own advice?

Carsten Arnholm, Norway says:
June 5, 2010 at 6:41 am
True. Tidal forces exist. However they are exceedingly small on the surface of the Sun, in the order of submillimeters if my memory serves me. Compared to the size and mass of the Sun, these effects are completely negligible.
And you’ve paid a visit to the Sun to absolutely ascertain just that, right?
Allow me to ask: I an object in flux easier to influence, or harder to influence?

it looks like Scafetta is not saying his work is about Saturn and Jupiter’s gravitational effect on earth but their effect on earth is via their gravitational effect on the sun.
some seem to be insisting the former

I have said this before, and I’ll say it again: You may dismiss NOT A THING until there is ABSOLUTE PROOF of no affect.
And if frogs had wings they would not bump their ass when they jump. There is no absolute proof in science. Actually global warming is caused by time travelling aliens.
.do not dismiss a thing without absolute proof.
In actuality we only need posit those things REQUIRED to make an theory work. Its not about ruling things OUT. Its about positing things as causes and then testing.

Leif Svalgaard says:
June 5, 2010 at 9:03 pm
JDN says:
June 5, 2010 at 8:17 pm
Any net gravitational force on the body of the sun will shift this core relative to the rest of the sun.
No, it will not.
Really?
Got certifiable, undeniable, incontrovertible proof of such?
Bring it on. Leif!
Otherwise, keep an open mind.

Scafetta:
“My smooth is obtained with the MODWT itself. I do not know why BS09 used such a polynomial fit. Probably because by adopting a periodic padding their MODWT smooth component looked horrible. The point in 2000 was merging the point in 1900!
So, they preferred a nice polynomial fit.
But I really do not know, please ask them.
Steve:
right now I do not have time to post a code, I do not use your R program. My codes with all the libraries are a mess. I will prepare a nice code and put it online, but I will not be able to do it right now. Just a few days.”
That was august 9 2009. Promise made by Scafetta. not kept. Not because he wasnt asked nicely. His code is likely an embarassing mess. Since 2007 a group of us have consistently asked for access to the code and data of climate science. Aint gunna stop, and aint gunna cut nobody any slack.
We are still waiting.

Steven mosher says:
June 6, 2010 at 1:09 am
I have said this before, and I’ll say it again: You may dismiss NOT A THING until there is ABSOLUTE PROOF of no affect.
And if frogs had wings they would not bump their ass when they jump. There is no absolute proof in science. Actually global warming is caused by time travelling aliens.
.do not dismiss a thing without absolute proof.
In actuality we only need posit those things REQUIRED to make an theory work. Its not about ruling things OUT. Its about positing things as causes and then testing.
[1] If frogs had wings, they’d STILL bump their arses upon landing.
[2] Since you seem so enamored of ‘time-traveling space aliens,’ then you must prove prove of their existence. You mentioned them first, ergo you are required to provide proof. Fantasy does NOT count as proof.
[3] If the only thing required to make a theory work is the point of a government gun pointed at your head, then we’ll guess the WWII Germany was a blazing success for the Jews.
Right?

Nicola has shown a correlation between SSB distance plus solar velocity and the modulation of Earth’s climate….this is the focal point.
The SSB distance between 1970 and 2000 experienced the greatest high because of Uranus & Neptune, this also correlates with one of the big rises in Earth temperatures. The IPCC are riding the outer gas giant wave, but it has crashed…we are just beginning to see their demise.

Paul Vaughan says:
June 6, 2010 at 3:28 am
Re: Steven mosher
What data & code are you looking for? Everything you need is here:
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?horizons
And the same data proves the imbalance of angular momentum between the Sun and the rest of the solar system mass.
The mechanism has been provided and yet no challenge?

Paul Vaughan says:
June 5, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Thanks Paul. I’m going to watch it.

899:
Here’s the proof:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavendish_experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem
I just wasn’t using them when I wrote my first post. Sorry guys.

someone school me here.
gravitation acts proportionally between two masses.
therefore, two heavier masses will attract with a greater force than two lighter masses.
so shouldn’t the hammer and the moon fall together faster than the feather and moon?
what if we dropped something with mass of say, jupiter, and a feather?
and i will of course google the matter…

So Nicola, great paper and yes the data is too overwhelmingly interesting to be ignored.
What’s your call on the current solar cycle? Do you think we are into a Dalton repeat? I am quite worried the Katla volcano is going to blow during the current prolonged minimum and affect world grain production. The Katla volcano seems to be blowing every 95-100 years 1625, 1721, 1823, 1918, 2010?? Four of the last 7 blows have been on the 95-100 year cycle. Do you believe that volcanic activity in the northern hemisphere is linked with prolonged solar minimums?

Disclaimer: I’ve only read parts of NS’s paper. I do not do research in this field and will only share a few observations. I’ve only read a fraction of the comments above, so I hope I am not being repetitive.
There are a number of problems in the background review. These indicate a one-sidedness that the reviewer should have objected to.
NS: “For instance, the IPCC claims that more than 90% of the observed warming since 1900 and practically 100% of the observed warming since 1970 have had an anthropogenic origin (see figure 9.5 in IPCC, AR4-WG1). The latter conclusion derivesmerely from the fact that climate models referenced by the IPCC cannot explain the warming occurred since 1970 with any known natural mechanism.”
Figure 9.5 is in section 9.4.1.2: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-4-1-2.html
No percentages are given in this section of the IPCC report. The section explains: “The fact that climate models are only able to reproduce observed global mean temperature changes over the 20th century when they include anthropogenic forcings, and that they fail to do so when they exclude anthropogenic forcings, is evidence for the influence of humans on global climate. Further evidence is provided by spatial patterns of temperature change.” NS ignores this last statement and the evidence given for it. The section goes on to say: “There is much greater similarity between the general evolution of the warming in observations and that simulated by models when anthropogenic and natural forcings are included than when only natural forcing is included.” Further evidence is given in 9.4.1.4.
NS: “Over a much longer time scale the cosmic-ray flux record well correlates with the warm and ice periods of the Phanerozoic during the last 600 million years: the cosmic-ray flux oscillations are likely due to the changing galactic environment of the solar system as it crosses the spiral arms of the Milky Way [Shaviv, 2003, 2008; Shaviv and Veizer, 2003; Svensmark, 2007].”
But NS should acknowledge that this view is disputed. [http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/cosmoclimatology-tired-old-arguments-in-new-clothes/] He is entitled to his view, but any scientific article has to acknowledge serious disputes about ideas it is claiming to build on.
The paragraph, below, on the Chinese calendar should have been deleted. Its presence may be the forensic evidence of weak refereeing.
NS: “Interestingly, the traditional Chinese calendar, whose origins can be traced as far back as the 14th century BCE, is arranged in major 60-year cycles [Aslaksen, 1999]. Each year is assigned a name consisting of two components. The first component is one of the 10 Heavenly Stems (Jia, Yi, Bing, etc.), while the second component is one of the 12 Earthly Branches that features the names of 12 animals (Zi, Chou, Yin, etc.). Every 60 years the stem-branch cycle repeats. Perhaps, this sexagenary cyclical calendar was inspired by climatic and astronomical observations.”
The major problems are with the science. NS claims to tease out a ~60 year cycle in global mean temperature. This not new and has been disputed. [http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/cyclical-not/ ] A times series data set will likely have some peaks in its frequency spectrum. But this may be spurious and since the cycle time is on the same order as the length of the data set, this is even more likely to be spurious. In this case NS finds the ~60 cycle after subtracting out a parabolic curve. Well, the upward arc of that curve is what we are all worried about.
NS finds that there is a ~60 cycle involving the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. Well, since 60=60, there must be a connection! As pointed out recently of Real Climate: “You can’t do attribution based only on statistics.” [http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/05/on-attribution/] If NS had produced model using data from say 1850-1950 and used this to predict data from 1950 – 2010, that would be interesting.
The lack of a physical mechanism is of course a problem with astrology in general. NS does address this. To his credit he does not claim to have found one, but speculates on some possibilities. He hypothesizes that tidal forces of J & S on the sun may change solar irradiance. One test of NS’s hypothesis would be to see if there is a similar 60 year cycle on Mars. Maybe telescope observations of the Marian “ice” caps go back far enough to attempt this.

Nicola: Thanks for responding. I doubt many here have read your paper carefully – at least I admitted it! Obviously one cannot do a serious evaluation of a paper in few hours. This is a blog after all and not a journal. I will look at your paper again but probably won’t post on it. I have a some traveling to do and there is little point to posting on a topic here after a week.
Try and have some fun this summer before the planet burns up. 😉