# Scafetta's new paper attempts to link climate cycles to planetary motion

Nicola Scafetta sent me this paper yesterday, and I read it with interest, but I have a number of reservations about it, not the least of which is that it is partially based on the work of Landscheidt and the whole barycentric thing which gets certain people into shouting matches. Figure 9 looks to be interesting, but note that it is in generic units, not temperature, so has no predictive value by itself.

While that looks like a good hindcast fit to historical warm/cold periods, compare it to figure 7 to see how it comes out.

Now indeed, that looks like a great fit to the Ljungqvist proxy temperature reconstruction, but the question arises about whether we are simply seeing a coincidental cyclic fit or a real effect. I asked Dr. Leif Svalgaard about his views on this paper and he replied with this:

The real test of all this cannot come from the proxies we have because the time scales are too short, but from comparisons with other stellar systems where the effects are calculated to be millions of times stronger [because the planets are huge and MUCH closer to the star]. No correlations have been found so far.

See slide 19 of my AGU presentation:

http://www.leif.org/research/AGU%20Fall%202011%20SH34B-08.pdf

So, it would seem, that if the gravitational barycentric effect posited were real, it should be easily observable with solar systems of much larger masses. Poppenhager and Schmitt can’t seem to find it.

OTOH, we have what appears to be a good fit by Scafetta in Figure 7. So this leaves us with three possibilities

1. The effect manifests itself in some other way not yet observed.
2. The effect is coincidental but not causative.
3. The effect is real, but unproven yet by observations and predictive value.

I’m leaning more towards #2 at this point but willing to examine the predictive value. As Dr. Svalgaard points out in his AGU presentation, others have tried  but the fit eventually broke down. From slide 14

P. D. Jose (ApJ, 70, 1965) noted that the Sun’s motion about the Center of Mass of the solar system [the Barycenter] has a period of 178.7 yr and suggested that the sunspot cycles repeat with a similar period. Many later researchers have published variations of this idea. – Unfortunately a ‘phase catastrophe’ is needed every ~8 solar cycles

Hindcasting can be something you can easily setup to fool yourself with if you are not careful, and I’m a bit concerned over the quality of the peer review for this paper as it contains two instances of Scafetta’s signature overuse of exclamation points, something that a careful reviewer would probably not let pass.

Science done carefully rarely merits an exclamation point. Papers written that way sound as if you are shouting down to the reader.

The true test will be the predictive value, as Scafetta has been doing with his recent essays here at WUWT. I’m willing to see how well this pans out, but I’m skeptical of the method until proven by a skillful predictive forecast. Unfortunately it will be awhile before that happens as solar timescales far exceed human lifespan.

Below I present the abstract, plus a link to the full paper provided by Dr. Scafetta.

=============================================================

Multi-scale harmonic model for solar and climate cyclical variation throughout the Holocene based on Jupiter–Saturn tidal frequencies plus the 11-year solar dynamo cycle

Nicola Scafetta, ACRIM (Active Cavity Radiometer Solar Irradiance Monitor Lab) & Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA

Abstract

The Schwabe frequency band of the Zurich sunspot record since 1749 is found to be made of three major cycles with periods of about 9.98, 10.9 and 11.86 years. The side frequencies appear to be closely related to the spring tidal period of Jupiter and Saturn (range between 9.5 and 10.5 years, and median 9.93 years) and to the tidal sidereal period of Jupiter (about 11.86 years). The central cycle may be associated to a quasi-11-year solar dynamo cycle that appears to be approximately synchronized to the average of the two planetary frequencies. A simplified harmonic constituent model based on the above two planetary tidal frequencies and on the exact dates of Jupiter and Saturn planetary tidal phases, plus a theoretically deduced 10.87-year central cycle reveals complex quasi-periodic interference/beat patterns. The major beat periods occur at about 115, 61 and 130 years, plus a quasi-millennial large beat cycle around 983 years. We show that equivalent synchronized cycles are found in cosmogenic records used to reconstruct solar activity and in proxy climate records throughout the Holocene (last 12,000 years) up to now. The quasi-secular beat oscillations hindcast reasonably well the known prolonged periods of low solar activity during the last millennium such as the Oort, Wolf, Spörer, Maunder and Dalton minima, as well as the 17 115-year long oscillations found in a detailed temperature reconstruction of the Northern Hemisphere covering the last 2000 years. The millennial three-frequency beat cycle hindcasts equivalent solar and climate cycles for 12,000 years. Finally, the harmonic model herein proposed reconstructs the prolonged solar minima that occurred during 1900–1920 and 1960–1980 and the secular solar maxima around 1870–1890, 1940–1950 and 1995–2005 and a secular upward trending during the 20th century: this modulated trending agrees well with some solar proxy model, with the ACRIM TSI satellite composite and with the global surface temperature modulation since 1850. The model forecasts a new prolonged solar minimum during 2020–2045, which would be produced by the minima of both the 61 and 115-year reconstructed cycles. Finally, the model predicts that during low solar activity periods, the solar cycle length tends to be longer, as some researchers have claimed. These results clearly indicate that both solar and climate oscillations are linked to planetary motion and, furthermore, their timing can be reasonably hindcast and forecast for decades, centuries and millennia. The demonstrated geometrical synchronicity between solar and climate data patterns with the proposed solar/planetary harmonic model rebuts a major critique (by Smythe and Eddy, 1977) of the theory of planetary tidal influence on the Sun. Other qualitative discussions are added about the plausibility of a planetary influence on solar activity.

UPDATE 3/22/2012 – 1:15PM Dr. Scafetta responds in comments:

About the initial comment from Antony above,I believe that there are he might have misunderstood some part of the paper.

1)

I am not arguing from the barycentric point of view, which is false. In the paper I am talking

about tidal dynamics, a quite different approach. My argument

is based on the finding of my figure 2 and 3 that reveal the sunspot record

as made of three cycles (two tidal frequencies, on the side, plus a central

dynamo cycle). Then the model was developed and its hindcast

tests were discissed in the paper, etc.

{from Anthony – Note these references in your paper: Landscheidt, T.,1988.Solar rotation,impulses of the torque in sun’s motion, and

climate change. Climatic Change12,265–295.

Landscheidt, T.,1999.Extrema in sunspot cycle linked toSun’s motion. Solar

Physics 189,415–426.}

2)

There are numerous misconceptions since the beginning such as “Figure 9 looks to be interesting, but note that it is in generic units, not temperature, so has no predictive value by itself.”

It is a hindcast and prediction. There is no need to use specific units, but only dynamics. The units are interpreted correctly in the text of the paper as being approximately W/m^2 and as I say in the caption of the figure “However, the bottom curve approximately reproduces the patterns observed in the proxy solar models depicted in Fig. 5. The latter record may be considered as a realistic, although schematic, representation of solar dynamics.”

{from Anthony – if it isn’t using units of temperature, I fail to see how it can be of predictive value, there is not even any reference to warmer/cooler}

3) About Leif’s comments. It is important to realize that Solar physics is not “settled” physics. People do not even understand why the sun has a 11-year cycle (which is between the 10 and 12 year J/S tidal frequencies, as explained in my paper).

4)

The only argument advanced by Leif against my paper is that the phenomenon is his opinion was not observed in other stars. This is hardly surprising. We do not have accurate nor long records about other stars!

Moreover we need to observe the right thing, for example, even if you have a large planet very close to a star, the observable effect is associated to many things: how eccentric the orbits are and how big the star is, and its composition etc. Stars have a huge inertia to tidal effects and even if you have a planet large and close enough to the star to produce a theoretical 4,000,000 larger tidal effect, it does not means that the response from the star must be linear! Even simple elastic systems may be quite sensitive to small perturbations but become extremely rigid to large and rapid perturbations, etc.

It is evident that any study on planetary influence on a star needs to start from the sun, and then eventually extended to other star systems, but probably we need to wait several decades before having sufficiently long records about other stars!

In the case of the sun I needed at least a 200 year long sunspot record to

detect the three Schwabe cycles, and at least 1000 years of data for

hindcast tests to check the other frequencies. People can do the math for how long we need to wait for the other stars before having long enogh records.

Moreover, I believe that many readers have a typical misconception of physics.

In science a model has a physical basis when it is based on the observations

and the data and it is able to reconstruct, hindcast and/or forecast them.

It is evident to everybody reading my paper with an open mind that under the scientific

method, the model I proposed is “physically based” because I am

describing and reconstructing the dynamical properties of the data and I

showed that the model is able to hindcast millennia long data records.

Nobody even came close to these achievements.

To say otherwise would mean to reject everything in science and physics

because all findings and laws of physics are based on the observations and

the data and are tested on their capability of reconstruct, hindcast and/or

forecast observations, as I did in the paper

Of course, pointing out that I was not solving the problem using for example

plasma physics or quantum mechanics or whatever else. But this is a complex

exercise that needs its own time. As I correctly say in the paper.

“Further research should address the physical mechanisms necessary to

integrate planetary tides and solar dynamo physics for a more physically

based model.”

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Peter Miller
March 21, 2012 7:55 am

Makes more sense than Mann’s interpretation of tree rings, but then again almost anything does that.

J
March 21, 2012 8:06 am

suggestion on word choice:
“2. The effect is coincidental but not causative.”
“The phenomenon is coincidental but not causative.”

mark wagner
March 21, 2012 8:08 am

In my experience, most coincidences aren’t.

jack morrow
March 21, 2012 8:08 am

Climate science has not figured out what causes weather and different cycles and makes all kinds of guesses as to what does. Chaos seems to reign. The sun, to me causes the chaos, and as we corkscrew through space the only thing I see see to cause a climate cycle is the sun. We may years before we find the answer as to what causes changes in the sun and in turn changes our climate.

Ken Hall
March 21, 2012 8:12 am

Is the time-scale quite correct on those graphs? It appears to show the temperature to the rear 2150 or so. Not just to 2012

gallopingcamel
March 21, 2012 8:20 am

That mega Jupiter argument makes no sense. We are talking about rather subtle effects such as modulation of solar winds that are tough to detect unless you have an ACRIM satellite in orbit around the star in question.

Alex the skeptic
March 21, 2012 8:22 am

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times: Call the police.

March 21, 2012 8:24 am

By climate science standards this is good enough, no need for caveats 1,2, and 3, or to bother with peer review concerns. Anthony, you’re just not supportive enough of The Cause.
I propose a new review system: pear review. After you finish your paper, give a pear to the reviewer. If the pear is delicious, the paper is good. If not, rewrite some bits and then, get another pear. Should be at least as reliable as pal review.

March 21, 2012 8:26 am

If Earth’s smallish moon can cause tidal action with our oceans, why shouldn’t we expect that the huge masses of Jupiter and Saturn could have some tidal effects on the Sun’s swirling gases and their related magnetic fields?

Crispin in Johannesburg
March 21, 2012 8:34 am

I am happy to see this topic reaching a wider, more modern audience than Landsheidt did during his lifetime, as well as the works that preceded his and upon which his were based. When Landsheidt started to do his best work towards the end of his life, the attack-machine was in full cry and at its most effective. Is there any doubt that Piers Corbyn is using the same method? True revenge is being able to make accurate predictions in the face of the serial failure of the GCM’s to predict anything, even the past.
Now that we are living in saner times the simple and obvious questions can again be asked once again. Remember that Landscheidt’s ability to predict ENSO events was not accepted as ‘legitimate’ not because he was inaccurate, but because the mechanism for its effect was not clearly stated. This made it easier to dismiss as ‘coincidence’. His prediction of the April 2003 El Nino 3.5 years in advance, accurate to within 4 weeks, is no small potatoes. Keep in mind his prediction of a major drought in the USA in 2018 and 2025 as his parting shot.
Anthony I appreciate your caveats about how well Scarfetta’s paper was reviewed but, come on, this work is not exactly new and what do we expect from the Warmists anyway? They are going to rail against you for allowing the subject to be discussed because it threatens their entire world view. Do you still care? Anything that smells of solar influence on the this planet is anathema. They are going to squeal about how this (rather obvious) effect has been ‘disproven’ and is only clung to by ….. (fill in your favourite anti-science epithet). If the planets can pull the the barycentre outside the radius of the Sun, it is a powerful effect. Consider the tidal influence of the moon on the Earth, yet the E-M barycentre is well below the surface.
Scarfetta, congratulations and thanks for the details and the graphs and the topic. Someone has to lead. It might as well be you.

Bill Yarber
March 21, 2012 8:37 am

Have we found any solar systems with super Jupiter mass planets very close to their star? We know that Jupiter exerts huge gravitational forces on its close-in moons (especially those in elliptical orbits), effectively causing tidal movements and surface lava flows. Isn’t it likely that a planet with three times the mass of Jupitor in close proximity to its star would be eventually torn apart by these gravitational stresses?
Bill

March 21, 2012 8:37 am

Everyone should check this work against Fairbridge and Sanders “The Suns Orbit AD 750 -2050: Basis for New Perspectives on Planetary Dynamics and Earth -Moon linkage”
in Climate – History, Periodicity and Predictability eds Ramino et al Van Nostrand 1987 p 446
also see the enormous Bibliography which follows that article, on p 475 – 541.
As to mechanism – barycenter etc it is the torsion caused by the rate of change of angular momentum about the barycenter that matters.- see Jose Suns Motion and Sunspots Astronomical Journal April 1965

Olavi
March 21, 2012 8:43 am

Leif said, that there is no found tidal effects in exoplanet systems. How long we have examine exoplanets, and is it easy to find those effects?
Name HD 41004 B b
Discovered in 2004
M.sin i 18.4 (± 0.22) MJ
Semi major axis 0.0177 AU
Orbital period 1.3283 (± 1.2e-05) days
Eccentricity 0.081 (± 0.012)
ω 178.5 (± 7.8) deg.
Tperi 2452434.88 (± 0.0029)
Update 25/08/06
Distance 43.03 pc
With best equipment we have, is the distance like that (43.03 pc ) what prevents us to see. Can we find effects what Pluto’s moons cause it’s surfface? No we can’t, so there is no effect?

Crispin in Johannesburg
March 21, 2012 8:43 am

@Bob Paglee says:
If Earth’s smallish moon can cause tidal action with our oceans, why shouldn’t we expect that the huge masses of Jupiter and Saturn could have some tidal effects on the Sun’s swirling gases and their related magnetic fields?
++++++++
Exactly. Something to keep in mind is that the tidal action on the Earth is largely constrained by the fact it is so solid. The gases near the surface of the Sun are able to be pulled around to a much greater extent as witnessed by the ‘coincidence’ between the Earth-Moon-Venus barycentre and the sunspot butterfly pattern. However the key to the J-S phenomenon is the rate of change of the position of the more dense central region of the Sun with respect to the surface. In other words the Solar centre of gravity is disturbed with respect to the optical centre. There are several mechanisms one can imagine for how that can change the magnetic field.

March 21, 2012 8:46 am
tallbloke
March 21, 2012 8:48 am

“Thus, we conclude that a solar dynamo
theory and a planetary-tidal theory of solar variation are
complementary, not in opposition: there is the need of both of them
to understand solar dynamics!”
Exactly what I told Leif Svalgaard here a year ago. I think I was forced (in desperation) to start using exclamation marks too.

March 21, 2012 8:48 am

Planetary orbital resonances = Sun internal standing waves and other flow and circulatory perturbations/changes that affect output over long periods.

Russ R
March 21, 2012 8:48 am

@ Bob Paglee:
Because the force of gravity is proportional to an object’s mass, but inversely proportional to the squared distance between masses.
Jupiter’s mass is 20,837 times greater than the moon’s mass. But the mean radius of Jupiter’s orbit (actually the semi-major axis since it’s an ellipse) is 2025x that of the moon’s orbit.
20837 / (2025 ^ 2)
= 20837 / 4100231
= 0.0063
So, Jupiter’s tidal force on the sun would be ~0.6% of the moon’s tidal force on earth. Saturn, being less massive and more distant would be even less of a tidal influence.

March 21, 2012 8:51 am

Anthony,
thank you for the post. Only one comment.
You say “…whole barycentric thing which gets certain people into shouting matches”
Please note that the model that I present has nothing to do with “barycentric thing”.
My model is based on tidal patterns and solar dynamo cycle whose physical reality nobody disputes.
About the criticism of Leif, please note that we do not have sufficient detailed data about other stars to study this phenomenon there. There is the need to have extremely detailed solar irradiance records, to know the kind of planets they have (big and small) and to have very long records. We do not have this information for the other stars, unless Leif can provide a detailed sunspot number record or cosmogenic record for a few centuries about another star. Moreover, those few cases where we find a giant planet close to a star (the planet moves fast) the issue is understanding “variation” from main tide potential, not just its average strength and solar inertia to fast variations, that suppresses everything.
Tidal phenomena are however observed and well studied in binary star systems where they are very well known and in planetary systems. For example, look at:
“Tidal instability in stellar and planetary binary systems”
by M Le Bars, L Lacaze, S Le Dizès, P Le Gal, M Rieutord
http://www.mendeley.com/research/tidal-instability-in-stellar-and-planetary-binary-systems/
(this is just the first paper I got from Google) These things are in astrophysics textbooks.
About the phenomenon I am observing, it is so small that it is evident that we need to start from our Sun and solar system where we do have sufficiently detailed information and long records.
The model that I propose is supported by its proven hindcast capabilities. The model just uses the planetary frequencies and phases plus another frequency and phase deduced from a combination of planetary and sunspot record since 1749, and then the model is run back for thousand years, and all major solar and climate patterns are schematically recovered.
For those interested in a free copy of the paper, it is here
http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.4143
There are many other figure/tests in the paper.
Thank you

richard verney
March 21, 2012 8:59 am

One’s initial ‘gut’ impression is that the forces at play would be too weak to amount to material drivers.
Obviously, we do not understand the magnetosphere sufficiently to know whether bodies other than the sun and moon may have a bearing on that and if so, what is the effect of this.
However, it may not be limited to just the magnetosphere, and the effect may extend to the atmospheric bulge. The celestrial bodies (primarily the sun and moon, but to a lesser extend other planetary objects) have a role to play with the tides and atmospheric bulge. There is little doubt that the atmosphere is undergoing a constant flexing (both from the bottom and from the top) as a result of the interaction of the gravitional forces at play and the spinning nature of the globe, but whether this is sufficient to input some temperature into the atmosphere is on the basis of our present understanding and knowledge rather speculative. Can it drive climate is even more speculative.
I have long held the view that we may underestimate the significance of the atmospheric bulge. We are not in a static system and no account seems to be taken of that..

March 21, 2012 9:01 am

re: Bob Paglee at 8:26 AM I can’t do the calculations right
here and now, but it would seem that the gravitational pull
by the Moon on the Earth should be compared to Jupiter’s
on the Sun. That would give a bit of a clue if Jupiter really
affected the Sun as much as the Moon affects the Earth.

March 21, 2012 9:03 am

Tracing cycles of expolanet host stars is an angle that I thought might help settle the Landscheidt controversy. I doubt that stars with massive short-period planets will be the final word. Decades of data from true Solar System analogs would be better.

March 21, 2012 9:08 am

“dynamics!”
About my usage of exclamation marks, please note that I am not a English speaking person and I am not able to evaluate how a native English speaking person would interpret it.
Anthony told me that I have to avoid using them (I used it twice in the paper). In the future I will follow his precious advice. So, consider it a typo, if you do not like it.

March 21, 2012 9:09 am

Contrary to Mr. Watts’ claim, Dr. Scafetta’s model does not make “predictions.” It makes “projections.” While people often conflate the ideas that are referenced by the two words, the ideas are distinct. Predictions are discrete in time, are countable and have a one-to-one relationship to the events in a statistical population, making it easy to see that predictions are not the output from Dr. Scafetta’s model for the output is continuous and references no population.
When I point out to them that there is a scientifically important distinction between a “prediction” and a “projection,” many bloggers are inclined to ignore me and to continue to conflate the ideas that are referenced by the two words. However, it is well worth the expenditure of mental effort that is required in gaining an understanding of this distinction, for as predictions are falsifiable, they lie in science while as projections are not falsifiable they do not lie in science.

Jean Meeus
March 21, 2012 9:10 am

“So, Jupiter’s tidal force on the sun would be ~0.6% of the moon’s tidal force on earth. Saturn, being less massive and more distant would be even less of a tidal influence.”
Yes indeed. Moreover, here on the Earth we see the tides because the oceans are fluid while the continents are rigid. But the Sun is completely fluid, so what?

richard verney
March 21, 2012 9:17 am

To take an extreme example of gravitional forces at play and their effect, just think of Io.
This is the most geologically active body in the solar system. The power source for all this energy is gravity. Io being ‘pulled’ between Jupiter and the other Galelean moons.
On Io, the work being done by gravity and the resultant heat it generates is easy to see.
Why should not a similar effect but to a much leser extent, be ongoing on Earth? For example, how much energy is being counter-balanced by a leap tide as opposed to a spring tide? How much energy is involved in the displacement of the tides which in turn displaces the atmosphere from below? How much energy is involved in the creation and ongoing displacement of the atmospheric bulge?
I expect that a lot of work is involved in these phenomena and a by product of work is heat.
I can in principle see that it possible that gravitational interaction which is flexing the atmosphere both from below and above could in theory input some heat. The issue I have is whether this is just miniscule, and more significantly whether this could over time drive climate. .

Matt
March 21, 2012 9:23 am

I found this web site really useful in figuring out how much of an effect the planets, mainly Jupiter, have on the sun:
http://www.orbitsimulator.com/gravity/articles/ssbarycenter.html

tallbloke
March 21, 2012 9:26 am

Those who are potentially persuaded by those that say that the tidal forces are too small to be effective should remember these three points.
1) Solar variation is pretty small too. Around 0.1% over a decade. Still enough to affect terrestrial climate quite dramatically though, due to various amplifications and feedbacks.
2) If I push a flagpole just hard enough to make it rock slightly, and push it again at just the right time with the same force, it will rock a bit more. If I repeat the process enough times, I can break the flagpole because it is rocking so violently. Small forces, applied regularly, which are in harmony with the natural oscillation of the object they are applied to, create powerful resonances.
3) Leif always quotes the size of the vertical tides, and never discusses horizontal flows. On a body like the Sun, which has very high surface gravity, small vertical displacements lead to energetic and wide ranging horizontal flows, these can get reinforced by the myriad number of ‘coincidences’ in the timings of various forces acting on the solar surface.

Legatus
March 21, 2012 9:40 am

First, something is causing periodic ice ages on this planet, the most likely causative factor is the sun for such regular occurrences, if it was purely a random variation of climate cycles not related to the sun, it would not be nearly so regular. Something is also causing periodic, regular cycles of warm and cool periods in interglacials, little ice ages, medieval warm periods, that sort of thing, and once again such regularity does not look like random cycles of entirely earth based phenomenon, such as ocean currents, ENSO, or the like. In short, something causes these cycles, if not the sun, then what? Until we know at least that, “climate scientists” need a new name, because they are neither studying the climate, what actually causes variations in it, nor are they scientists.
Second, these major variations are far apart, the smaller little ice ages are at least several hundred years apart, the larger full scale ice ages over 10,000, have we been closely observing other suns other than our own long enough to spot such similar changes over such time periods? The answer, no we have not. Therefore, we simply do not have enough data to work with yet.
Third, since our “climate scientists” are not actually studying climate, at least enough to even know what causes these major changes in our climate, we cannot know what solar effects may or may not be behind them (more likely may than may not, see above). We therefore do not know what we are looking for, so it is no wonder we cannot find it.
Fourth, the currently posited idea of what does cause periods of warming and cooling are based around the solar wind. We cannot measure the solar wind of other suns other than our own. Thus, if these climate changes depend on solar wind, we will not be able to compare our solar wind with any other suns, and thus will never see it happen anywhere else. This is especially true if other changes are not also present when there are changes in solar wind, and if these changes are not quite large, large enough for us to see them a gazillion miles away on another star (over a period of several hundred years at least, see above). This is also true of magnetism, incoming cosmic rays, and other things we can measure here but cannot measure way over there.
And lastly, As Upton Sinclair once said: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.” We may not have data related to this for the simple reason that we don’t want to. A lot of peoples jobs depend on CO2 causing everything, and the sun, ours or any others, not causing anything. Do not be surprised, therefore, if we do not have data to prove or disprove something that we are going out of our way to avoid looking at.

MattN
March 21, 2012 9:45 am

“In my experience, most coincidences aren’t.”
^This^

Ed_B
March 21, 2012 9:50 am

Richard Verney says:
“I have long held the view that we may underestimate the significance of the atmospheric bulge.”
me too:
If as postulated, atmospheric density at the surface plus TOA insolation drives temperature, then changes in the bulge due to planetary influences should change the density, thus temperature.
Changes in the bulge might change the albedo too.
Changes in the bulge should change the location of trade winds.

Steve C
March 21, 2012 10:10 am

I look forward to reading through this later, but I already like the mention of the “quasi-millennial large beat cycle around 983 years”.
As for those negligible effects between planets and sun, resonance. Given the very slow rate at which solar system motion slows, there are many cycles of – admittedly weak – interaction which will allow the eventual exchange of energy between anything and anything else in the system which ‘rings’ at a similar frequency. It would be surprising if ‘astronomical’ cycles were not present in the climatic record, more so given that most of the runners are in the fluid state.

March 21, 2012 10:10 am

gallopingcamel says:
March 21, 2012 at 8:20 am
That mega Jupiter argument makes no sense. We are talking about rather subtle effects
Some starspots are huge: http://www.noao.edu/noao/noaonews/dec99/node2.html and we can today easily measure stellar activity.

March 21, 2012 10:11 am

While the barocentric notion may not be hard science per se, I think there would be merit to conducting more frequency domain analysis of solar and solar-cosmic behavior. After all, it’s a massive circuit.

March 21, 2012 10:13 am

Gravity’s influence on what essentially are electromagnetic events in the origin and consequence is at best very small, but most likely negligible.

Editor
March 21, 2012 10:19 am

I fear I find this totally unconvincing. First, we have three free parameters, which are the three frequencies:

The Schwabe frequency band of the Zurich sunspot record since 1749 is found to be made of three major cycles with periods of about 9.98, 10.9 and 11.86 years. The side frequencies appear to be closely related to the spring tidal period of Jupiter and Saturn (range between 9.5 and 10.5 years, and median 9.93 years) and to the tidal sidereal period of Jupiter (about 11.86 years).

Saying that he is using 9.98 because it is kinda like the mean spring tidal period of Jupiter and Saturn makes no sense. If it followed the actual spring tidal period of Jupiter and Saturn that would be one thing … but it doesn’t.
Here’s what he says about the middle cycle of 10.9 years:

The central cycle may be associated to a quasi 11-year solar dynamo cycle that appears to be approximately synchronized to the average of the two planetary frequencies.

Oh, please. I thought this was science, and “may be associated to a quasi 11-year solar dynamo cycle” is handwaving.
The final cycle, 11.86 years, is the sidereal period of Jupiter rounded to two decimals.
Here’s the problem with this. When you are dealing with beat frequencies, particularly short cycles with closely related periods, the exact lengths of the cycles make a huge difference to the result. If you are looking as Scafetta is at a 2,000 year run, a difference of 0.1 years in a cycle length leads to a difference of 200 years in the location of the peaks and valleys of the cycle.
This means that by making very small changes in the three frequencies, we end up with huge changes in the results … and since Dr. Scafetta is not dealing with actual astromical cycles but possible “quasi 11 year” cycles and the like, he is free to adjust the cycles to fit the results to the reality.
Anthony above puts out three possibilities for this study, viz:

1. The effect manifests itself in some other way not yet observed.
2. The effect is coincidental but not causative.
3. The effect is real, but unproven yet by observations and predictive value.

I hold that a fourth possibility is much more probable than any of the above—that it is a trivial exercise in curve fitting using three free parameters, and if three hadn’t sufficed, he would gladly have used four free parameters.
Beat frequencies are a perfect way to do that, because the adjustments are so small that you can still claim that the parameters have some real-world basis because they are supposedly “closely related” to one of the literally hundreds of possible astronomical cycles.
So far, in his three posts on WUWT, Dr. Scafetta has said that the Earth’s surface temperatures are ruled by:
First Post: 20 and 60 year cycles. These were supposed to be related to some astronomical cycles which were never made clear.
Second Post: 9.1, 10-11, 20 and 60 year cycles. These were supposed to be related to:
9.1 years : this was justified as being sort of near to a calculation of (2X+Y)/4, where X and Y are lunar precession cycles,
“10-11” years: he never said where he got this one, or why it’s so vague.
20 years: supposedly close to an average of the sun’s barycentric velocity period.
60 years: kinda like three times the synodic period of Jupiter/Saturn. Why not four times? Who knows.
Third Post: (this paper). 9.98, 10.9, and 11.86 year cycles. These are claimed to be
9.98 years: slightly different from a long-term average of the spring tidal period of Jupiter and Saturn.
10.9 years: may be related to a quasi 11-year solar cycle … or not.
11.86 years: Jupiter’s sidereal period.
I’m sure you can see the problem. When you start by claiming a given cycle is valid because it is near to, not the same as but near to, (2X + Y)/4 where X and Y are lunar precessions, and then you drop that cycle entirely in favor of a similar length cycle which is supposed to be not the same as, but near to, the long term average of the spring tidal period of Jupiter and Saturn … sorry, kids, but that’s just picking one of the literally hundreds of astronomical cycles to justify your numbers.
When you are reduced to taking two astronomical cycles X and Y, and claiming that your magical cycle is valid because it is near to (2X + Y)/4, you can justify anything. Why not a cycle of length (2X + Y)/5, or (3X + Y)/4? Given the range of possible X and Y, and the range of possible combinations, using this method anything can be justified as an “astronomical cycle”.
I find this to be parameter fitting on steroids, cyclomania taken to the extreme. It is nothing but using free parameters, which are justified as being kinda sorta close to astronomical cycles, to make the elephant wiggle his trunk.
In support of this, please note that Dr. Scafetta first got a reasonable fit to the earth’s temperature using just 20 and 60 year cycles. Then he got a reasonable fit using 9.1, “10-11”, 20 and 60 year cycles. Now he shows a reasonable fit using 9.98, 10.9, and 11.86 cycles … so … why should we think any of them are more than playing with parameters?
I leave you to draw your own conclusion as to whether this is just trivial curve fitting. As for me, I see absolutely no scientific value in this at all.
w.

Editor
March 21, 2012 10:20 am

Exclamation points are a matter of style. I can see a reviewer suggesting they not be used but I don’t see how one could ever recommend rejection over a matter of style rather than substance. Thus I think Anthony is wrong to question the standard of peer review over such a thing (and I could even put an exclamation point on that).
As a matter of advice to Nicola, I would say to definitely avoid any use of exclamation points to strengthen an argument. Since it contains no logic it doesn’t add anything and the emphasis is just like repetition, or as Anthony says, “shouting.” As description, however, an exclamation point can be fine, expressing a personal sense of magnitude, but still probably hard for a non-native English speaker to judge.

Jeremy
March 21, 2012 10:24 am

OT – Oh the IRONY! Oh the hypocrisy!
[snip yes wildly off topic, which is why we have a tips and notes page, I’m not going to have this thread hijacked for a Gleick discussion – Anthony]

Werner Brozek
March 21, 2012 10:27 am

Alvin W says:
March 21, 2012 at 9:01 am
I can’t do the calculations right here and now, but it would seem that the gravitational pull by the Moon on the Earth should be compared to Jupiter’s on the Sun.

Here are the calculations for Jupiter and the sun in terms of center of mass. If only the sun and Jupiter existed in their present orbits, the center of gravity is actually outside the surface of the sun. Here are the important numbers:
Mass of the sun = 1.99 x 10^30 kg.
Mass of Jupiter = 1.90 x 10^27 kg.
Mean orbital radius of Jupiter = 7.78 x 10^11 m.
So the center of mass between Jupiter and the sun is
7.78 x 10^11 m x 1.90 x 10^27 kg/1.99 x 10^30 kg = 7.43 x 10^8 m.
However the sun’s equatorial radius is 6.96 x 10^8 m. This, of course, is less than the center of mass for Jupiter and the sun. The other planets will either add or subtract to this center of mass, depending on their location relative to Jupiter.
As for our earth and moon, that center of gravity is about 1000 miles below the surface of the earth or 3000 miles from the center of the earth. So in this sense at least, Jupiter has a larger effect on the sun than the moon does on earth. (Tides are a different matter.)

Dave Worley
March 21, 2012 10:32 am

I contend that the matter on the surface of the sun is in such an excited state that it does not take much to stimulate an energetic release. I’ve seen countless videos of comets and other objects passing near the sun appearing to stimulate a flare release from a point near the perogee. I’ve been shot down by experts on that belief many times, but I’m still a believer.

Dave Worley
March 21, 2012 10:33 am

perigee

Jean Meeus
March 21, 2012 10:35 am

“11.86 years: Jupiter’s synodic period.”
No, it is Jupiter’s sidereal period. The synodic period of Jupiter, for an observer on the Earth, is 399 days.
[Thanks, fixed. -w]

Werner Brozek
March 21, 2012 10:39 am

Nicola Scafetta says:
March 21, 2012 at 8:51 am
Please note that the model that I present has nothing to do with “barycentric thing”.
My model is based on tidal patterns and solar dynamo cycle whose physical reality nobody disputes.

Just to be sure I am understanding you correctly, does this meant that you believe that the barycenter or rapidity of changes to the barycenter absolutely has no bearing whatsoever on the “solar dynamo cycle”?

March 21, 2012 10:39 am

Willis Eschenbach says:
March 21, 2012 at 10:19 am
As for me, I see absolutely no scientific value in this at all.
Ah, but you need to read Scaffetta’s papers. It is all laid out in unconvincing detail. WUWT is fertile ground for all kinds of dubious claims: planetary cycles controlling the climate, planetary and lunar positions triggering earthquakes [Thousands of lives could be saved if just the lunatics were taking seriously], etc.

Gail Combs
March 21, 2012 10:45 am

Legatus says:
March 21, 2012 at 9:40 am
First, something is causing periodic ice ages on this planet, the most likely causative factor is the sun for such regular occurrences, if it was purely a random variation of climate cycles not related to the sun, it would not be nearly so regular. Something is also causing periodic, regular cycles of warm and cool periods in interglacials, little ice ages, …
________________________
It is called the Milankovitch cycles.
Luboš Motl brings up the basic correction to the Milankovitch cycles that make the theory fit.

…Gerard Roe realized a trivial mistake that had previously been done. And a similar mistake is being done by many people all the time – scientists as well as laymen; alarmists as well as skeptics. The problem is that people confuse functions and their derivatives…
So the right quantity that should be compared with the insolation – i.e. the sunshine near the Arctic circle – is not the ice volume itself but its time derivative. No doubt about it. This “fix” is analogous to the transition from the Aristotelian science to the Newtonian one. 😉 By taking the derivative, the faster, high-frequency, short-period cycles in the ice volume are amplified while the very slow ones (100,000-year cycles) are suppressed. http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/07/in-defense-of-milankovitch-by-gerard.html

Milankovitch cycles have been known to all scientists for decades even the warmists:

…A more definitive confirmation of Milankovitch came in 1976, in a paper by Hays, Imbrie and Shackleton, using Shackleton’s data in the figure above. But long before either that paper or my own, there was widespread behind-the-scenes acceptance of Milankovitch, and Kukla, for one, was concerned about the implications….. http://calderup.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/next-ice-age/

March 21, 2012 10:46 am

Without violating any ethics, I can say that I was a reviewer of an earlier version of this paper submitted to a better journal and the judgement of several reviewers was: “The paper is crap and based on cyclomanic derivations”.

harrywr2
March 21, 2012 10:50 am

60 years: kinda like three times the synodic period of Jupiter/Saturn. Why not four times? Who knows.
Saturn and Jupiter align every 20 years. They align in the same solar quadrant plus 9 degrees every 60 years. So it’s a case of them aligning in the same ‘earth season’ every 60 years.

March 21, 2012 10:53 am

Jupiter’s mass is 20,837 times greater than the moon’s mass. But the mean radius of Jupiter’s orbit (actually the semi-major axis since it’s an ellipse) is 2025x that of the moon’s orbit.
20837 / (2025 ^ 2)
= 20837 / 4100231
= 0.0063
So, Jupiter’s tidal force on the sun would be ~0.6% of the moon’s tidal force on earth. Saturn, being less massive and more distant would be even less of a tidal influence.

I do so love Fermi estimates, but be careful. You’re reasoning is completely erroneous because the tides are a second order effect, due to the difference between the gravitational field at the center of mass of the tidal object and its value on e.g. the near and far boundaries. This produces and additional factor of the ratio $R_{sun}/R_{jo}$ times the absolute magnitude of the field of Jupiter at a distance of the approximate radius of its orbit $R_{jo}$ (plus a factor of 2).
That is, a simple estimate of the (magnitude of the differential) “tidal field” on the near side of the sun to Jupiter might be $\frac{GM_j}{R_{jo}^2} - \frac{GM_j}{(R_{jo} - R_{sun})^2} \approx \frac{2GM}{R_{jo}^2} \left(\frac{R_{sun}}{R{jo}}\right)$. Thus your estimate is off by the neglect of $R_{earth}/R_{mo}$ on the one hand and $R_{sun}/R_{so}$ on the other. The ratio of these ratios is order of another factor of ten, so assuming your other arithmetic is correct (I didn’t check it) the relative size of the differential “tidal field” is more like 0.06%.
However, as noted, there are other really important differences one needs to account for. One is that the Sun is a really, really large ball of very hot, compressible fluid. Another is the lack of e.g. continents, although magnetic inhomogeneities may function somewhat similarly. Because the Sun is so very large and so very hot, even a very small secular variation in the laterally differential field strength in some direction has a long way to be amplified and possibly be self-organized into a tidal resonance, a breathing mode/quadrupolar deformation of the sun that slightly lags the position of Jupiter in the sky. It is this quadrupolar deformation that e.g. is slowly increasing the radius of the moon’s orbit (and slowing the Earth’s rotational velocity). In the Earth, the oceans experience very large tides in some places and not so much in others where the actual tidal field is larger because its resonances interact with coastal geometry and basically funnel the tidal wave so that it is strongly amplified. Oceanic tides in Maine and Nova Scotia are much larger than they are in NC — more than twice as high — in spite of the fact that the actual tidal field strictly increases as one approaches the plane of the Moon’s orbit. Sunspots and regions with strong magnetic flux may well do similar channelling of the solar tidal wave due to Jupiter (or other planets), but in a nonlinear and chaotic way (as sunspots are hardly fixed).
The final difference is one I have a hard time getting any sort of handle on. Solar dynamics inside has some very bizzare features. For example, the “speed of light” inside the sun is basically a crawl — you could walk faster than a photon generated deep inside the sun manages to diffuse towards the surface. Given the reasonable assumption that resonant tidal surface waves modulate pressure, they may well also modulate the core fusion reaction. Even very weak modulation would create very slowly travelling outward directed amplitude waves in energy density, and (after a lag of 100,000 years or so) those waves would reach the general vicinity of the surface. Certain harmonics of those waves may well heterodyne with the current phase of the harmonic tidal resonance, again in a way that is likely delayed differential but strongly modulated by nonlinearly and chaotic details of surface state.
Under such circumstances it would be very difficult to put limits on the magnitude of the influence of the tidal wave on solar state. With resonances, even a very small driving force with the right frequency can produce a large response. Although one might expect damping near the surface to limit the size of the resonances, the interior dynamics of the sun may be so constrained by the enormous density and pressure that they are not negligible, that a significant part of what we see today arriving at the surface of the sun is coherently connected to solar state a very long time ago.
There is substantial evidence that there are resonant processes in the Sun’s energy production cycle with many different timescales, some of which are sufficiently distinct that they get names and are postulated to be connected to specific modes e.g. r-modes — fourier studies of neutrino flux, for example. However, I think that internal solar dynamics is one of our vast wells of mostly-ignorance in the great sea of scientific knowledge; we are still building the tools that might lead to the tools that would one day let us make decent inferences about what is going in there. Lief may well disagree and think that it is all well-understood at this point, but again this is a hard problem and one where getting an experimental “glimpse” at what is going on deep inside the solar interior is a bit difficult because, well, most of the Sun is in the way…
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MarkW
March 21, 2012 10:54 am

I personally lean towards believing that the charts are more coincidence than anything, but even I can think of a few responses to Leif’s data.
1) The orbits are too close. IE, whatever is being affected can’t respond that fast. Jupiter’s orbit is, I think, 12 years. The planets Leif mentions, the orbit is just a few days. That’s a huge difference.
2) The orbits of the planets that Leif mentions are not stable enough. IE, it takes multiple millions of years for the harmonics to build up to the level where they can be detected.
3) The gravitational attraction is too strong, instead of creating harmonics, all we get is chaos.

MarkW
March 21, 2012 10:56 am

A couple of other points.
4) The age of the star may matter.
5) The size of the star may matter.

jorgekafkazar
March 21, 2012 10:58 am

Interesting, as you note, based on that correlation coefficient of 0.3. But as they say in Germany: “Ach! Das ist Wigglezusammenbringen!”

March 21, 2012 11:08 am

Leif Svalgaard says: March 21, 2012 at 10:39 am
Thousands of lives could be saved if just the lunatics were taking seriously
Dr. S ,
as a scion of land of Danes, can you help: are the visitors to the Copenhagen’s luna park ‘lunatics’?. I enjoyed it very much.

Eric Flesch (NZ)
March 21, 2012 11:11 am

Seems like numerology to me. Whatever trace effect there may be of the planets’ configurations upon the Sun, would be dwarfed by the variabilities, however slight, of the Sun’s internal processes. A flea on a camel’s back.

Philip Peake
March 21, 2012 11:12 am

On exclamations: This too is a pet peeve of mine. They should rarely (if ever) be used other than in dialogue, and then sparingly.
My personal dislike is in messages displayed by computer applications. I have to admit that I was bought up on, and firmly believe in the original Unix style where if something succeeds it does so silently. Messages are only printed in case of failure and where specifically requested by use of (for example) a debug flag.
The ones I really take exception to are messages such as:
Command succeeded!
That give the impression that the writer of this particular piece of code is astonished that it actually worked, and fully expects that the normal mode of operation will be failure.
It appears that many of the authors of code with this sort of message are not native English speakers, so perhaps there is a little leeway to forgive on that basis. But as I try to observe the customs and usage of other languages so should others learn and respect the English language to the best of their ability.

March 21, 2012 11:14 am

Russ R says: March 21, 2012 at 8:48 am
Because the force of gravity is proportional to an object’s mass, but inversely proportional to the squared distance between masses.
Jupiter’s mass is 20,837 times greater than the moon’s mass. But the mean radius of Jupiter’s orbit (actually the semi-major axis since it’s an ellipse) is 2025x that of the moon’s orbit.
20837 / (2025 ^ 2)
= 20837 / 4100231
= 0.0063
For gravity, correct. For tides, incorrect. The tidal force is the derivative of gravity with respect to distance (from one side of the Sun to the other vs. distance to Jupiter). So:
T = 20837 * d (2025-2) / dd (minus 2 drops out, as it is the same for both systems)
= 20837 * (2025-3/sup>) = 2.51 * 10-6
So, Jupiter’s tidal force on the sun would be ~2.5 * 10-6 of the moon’s tidal force on earth. Interestingly, if you want to calculate it from one side of the Sun to the other, you must then multiply by (1,320,000 / 12,756) 3.
This gives T = 20837 * 103.53* 2025-3 = 2.78
So, solar tides caused by Jupiter would be 2.78 times the size of those on Earth caused by the Moon. Total tides of ~1-10 meters.
Saturn, being less massive and more distant would be even less of a tidal influence.

March 21, 2012 11:14 am

@ Leif Svalgaard says: March 21, 2012 at 10:39 am
I see that Leif does not have arguments any more.
So, until now the most serious criticism has been the accidental use of two exclamation points to express an emphasis on two comments I thought important to stress (according to their Italian usage which is more liberal in that than English). As I said, I will take your advise of not using them in the future.
The offending sentences are at page 13:
“The above critique in the early 1980s definitely convinced most solar scientists to abandon the planetary theory of solar variation first proposed in the 19th century. In fact, while good correlation patterns stimulate researchers to look for a possible explanation and their physical mechanisms, a lack of correlation can be easily interpreted as if no physical link truly exists!”
and
“Smythe and Eddy made the mistake of not taking into account the fact that solar variations had to be the result of a coupling between internal solar dynamo dynamics and external planetary tidal forcing, not just of the planetary tides alone: when the planetary tides interfere destructively with the internal solar dynamo cycle, the Sun becomes quieter and periods such as the solar Maunder minimum occur, as Figures 5-8 show. Thus, we conclude that a solar dynamo theory and a planetary-tidal theory of solar variation are complementary, not in opposition: there is the need of both of them to understand solar dynamical evolution!”

March 21, 2012 11:26 am

I’m sorry but fig. 7 the temperature does not match the lower graph. I see no correlation other than some peaks matching. This non-sense about planets and barycentric stuff just does not jive to me. I think most solar physicists want the sun to be the issue to get much more funding. Yes the sun may be the driver and it may be hyper sensitive but the proof is in the pudding. Proper speculation is not a bad thing and I am sure Leif and others would appreciate proper speculation.

March 21, 2012 11:26 am

Leif Svalgaard says: March 21, 2012 at 10:46 am
Leif, everybody here knows that you are not fair toward my research and you should not have served as reviewer on my paper. And my opinion is that your criticism was plainly wrong and clearly biased.
If Anthony allows, it would be a pleasure for me to discuss your criticism on this web-site. I can write a rebuttal, parallel to your arguments in a guest blog.
What do you think Anthony?
Let me know

March 21, 2012 11:26 am

Bob Paglee says:
March 21, 2012 at 8:26 am
If Earth’s smallish moon can cause tidal action with our oceans, why shouldn’t we expect that the huge masses of Jupiter and Saturn could have some tidal effects on the Sun’s swirling gases and their related magnetic fields?

Tidal action is caused by gravity. Gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the bodies. Jupiter is approximately 5 AU from the Sun and Saturn is approximately 10 AU from the Sun. 1AU ~ 150E6 km. The Moon is approximately 0.0025 AU from the Earth.
I believe the tallest tidal wave on the Sun is in the order of 1mm high.

March 21, 2012 11:27 am

I leave you to draw your own conclusion as to whether this is just trivial curve fitting. As for me, I see absolutely no scientific value in this at all.
I mostly agree, Willis, although I would be less vehement about the “no scientific value at all” bit. My difficulty (like yours, I think) is that I keep waiting for a hypothesis in there and one never quite appears. Surely at this point we have enough data and computational power to solve the equations of motion for the actual planetary and solar orbits to at least reasonable precision for a rather long time into the past and the future, so this using of this and that and another frequency/period picked out of all of the periods available and ignoring the rest, even though over time they can cumulate to not at all be negligible seems difficult to defend, and it is also unstated why or how the selected periods modulate solar state, let alone how they modulate the Earth’s nominal climate.
The Earth’s “mean temperature” (whatever that really means, given that we cannot easily measure or compute this in a non-controversial way even now with modern instrumentation and irregular non-systematic sampling, let alone in the distant past) appears to have a fair amount of natural variability with many different time scales present. Some of the time dependence appears to be “noise”. Some of it appears to be signal in the sense that characteristic frequencies rise above the general noise, where I have to use the phrase “appears to be” because our proxies suck, our reliable temperature record is phenomenally short compared to the time-scales of variation visible in the proxy record such as it is, because every time we extend the time domain over which such analysis occurs some of what appeared to be predictive signal turns out to be longer period noise and new possible harmonics appear, and because we are almost certain that the actual climate system modulation is described by some sort of complicated nonlinear delayed differential forms that exhibit chaos, where quasiperiodic oscillations around local attractors appear and disappear after a few cycles as the system evolves to where new attractors dominate the dynamics.
Identifying things that might be important periodicities is “science”, but if it stops there it isn’t very complete or useful science. Humans knew the day was one day long and highly reliably periodic for a very long time, but that in and of itself didn’t help us understand the dynamics that makes it so for almost all of that time, and many false models occurred that could explain the data as well as anything in the meantime, from a very regular god riding a flaming chariot across the sky once a day up to a fairly small ball of fire that orbited us once a day. As always, to move it from a set of unexplained observations that might well be coincidences or artifacts of an insufficiently long period of observation that happens to transform chaotic quasiperiod noise into hypothetical periodic signal one requires a concrete causal chain that can be verified and/or falsified.
In this case one needs to build a model that is more subtle and physically motivated than just displaying a fourier sum of a few harmonics and noting that it has a fair degree of correspondence to a data set over a few periods. Does it work across the last few cycles of glaciation and interglacials? Does it work across the whole Holocene, including the Younger Dryas? If it doesn’t, why should we believe that it is true/correct now? And above all, how is Jupiter affecting anything enough to produce the observed climate variations (let alone still smaller Saturn, still farther away)? What is the causal chain? Without a concrete hypothesis, there is nothing to verify or falsify, not really.
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March 21, 2012 11:32 am

Norman Page says:
March 21, 2012 at 8:37 am
As to mechanism – barycenter etc it is the torsion caused by the rate of change of angular momentum about the barycenter that matters.- see Jose Suns Motion and Sunspots Astronomical Journal April 1965

You probably mean the Sun’s change of orbital angular momentum. This is accounted for by similar change of orbital angular momentum of the planets, i.e. well known orbital perturbations, resulting in no change in the angular momentum of the whole solar system.

stumpy
March 21, 2012 11:36 am

It may be the other way around, our motion, and that of the other planets affects the suns climate, which in tern than affects us. Tidal force, which is influence by the planets to a lesser extent also affect the earths climate. Tidal force changes the shape of the atmosphere, the shape of the ocean and the crust of the earth, it also affects wind patterns as friction of ocean currents can move air masses along with it, thats why when the tide changes and starts to come in we suddenly get mist roll over the town I live in. I can tell what the tide is doing by looking at the wind direction and the clouds outside! Theres far more affecting the climate than we realise

Tom in Florida
March 21, 2012 11:37 am

If Jupiter can have a measurable influence on the Sun why does it not have a measurable influence on the Earth during appropriate times when both are on the same side? If it does has the influence been measured to be what? BTW I did observe the Jupiter/Venus show last week. I did actually feel my heart strings being pulled just knowing what I was looking at.

Editor
March 21, 2012 11:40 am

harrywr2 says:
March 21, 2012 at 10:50 am

60 years: kinda like three times the synodic period of Jupiter/Saturn. Why not four times? Who knows.
Saturn and Jupiter align every 20 years. They align in the same solar quadrant plus 9 degrees every 60 years. So it’s a case of them aligning in the same ‘earth season’ every 60 years.

So they are kinda close every three years, gosh, that’s impressive… which I suppose fits perfectly with the “kinda close” numbers that they’ve picked to represent everything else.
SO WHAT? Your claim is that as long as the cycle comes back somewhere near the start every three years, heck, it’s only nine degrees off, lets call it a real 3X cycle …
I find these kind of explanations and excuses ludicrous.
w.

March 21, 2012 11:42 am

Legatus says:
March 21, 2012 at 9:40 am
First, something is causing periodic ice ages on this planet, the most likely causative factor is the sun for such regular occurrences, if it was purely a random variation of climate cycles not related to the sun, it would not be nearly so regular.

We know one thing causing periodic ice ages: Milankovitch cycles

March 21, 2012 11:42 am

Nicola Scafetta says:
March 21, 2012 at 11:14 am
I see that Leif does not have arguments any more

March 21, 2012 11:46 am

Philip Peake says: March 21, 2012 at 11:12 am
“But as I try to observe the customs and usage of other languages so should others learn and respect the English language to the best of their ability.”
Talking is very easy, Philip. How many languages do you master?

March 21, 2012 11:50 am

Leif Svalgaard says: March 21, 2012 11:42 am
Not really, Leif. The discussion just started.

March 21, 2012 11:54 am

Carsten Arnholm, Norway says:
March 21, 2012 at 11:42 am
“First, something is causing periodic ice ages on this planet, the most likely causative factor is the sun for such regular occurrences”
We know one thing causing periodic ice ages: Milankovitch cycles

Of course, the planets [mostly Jupiter] change the Earth orientation and orbit on time scales of tens of thousands of years and hence the climate. This has nothing to do with the Sun and we should all keep the distinction and the time scales in mind.

March 21, 2012 11:56 am

Carsten Quite right – I thought my meaning was clear from the context- but obviously not and course the total angular momentum of the whole system is constant.

Silver Ralph
March 21, 2012 11:57 am

Richard Verney says:
“I have long held the view that we may underestimate the significance of the atmospheric bulge.”
—————————————————–
If this were a factor, there would be a 19-year signal in the weather/climate record. I do not see much evidence for this.
.

Sarge
March 21, 2012 12:01 pm

Exclamation points to not alter the truth or falseness of an argument…. but neither does snark, nor unsupported dismissiveness on the part of ‘scientists’ who disagree with it.
Nor, for that matter, does the ‘quality’ of the ‘publication’ which first prints it.
Amazes me, the adolescent hangups & personal emotionality that supposedly qualified scientists allow themselves to engage in, when they are supposed to be objectively pursuing truth.
As a scientific layman, I’d have a lot more faith in the evaluations of ‘professionals’ who behaved more professionally, to be completely honest.

Joachim Seifert
March 21, 2012 12:09 pm

To Willis and to others interested in the progress of astronomical forcings:
Willis has the tendency of getting lost in smallish effects and starts to dicker
whether a cycle is 11.97 or 11.98 in length….but….he loses the oversight over
the whole battleground at the same time……
Therefore, one has to judge from a Napoleons position to see any progress:
The IPCC is still centered around AR4 and the astronomical/planetary orbit
arguments made in AR4 are not only weak but grossly false, as I have stated
in my AR4 error complaints: They “ASSUME (!!) that “”orbital forcing is INVARIANT” (!!)
on less than milleniums scale…(AR4-wg1-chapt2) or “insignificant” (chapt9).
These statements are based on nonsense of some Belgians (Goosse 2005, and
Bertrand 2002) as reference, NASA JPL Horizons is completely ignored in
their papers……these guys have never heard of planetary
cycles or forcing…..they would not even know what Scafetta is talking about…
I had some correspondence with the great Andre Berger as former head
over there….they are decades behind in their outfit in Louvain…. too bad…..
Whereas Nick Scafetta is the grand astronomical climate pioneer, leading us in
showing the road to real climate science; he being ahead of our times……
If smallish effects are still unresolved, then lets join and take the few disturbing
hair out of the soup instead of dipping the complete pot out…..
Nick Scafetta did it and we can expect more of progress…..
JS

David A. Evans
March 21, 2012 12:11 pm

tallbloke says:
March 21, 2012 at 9:26 am
It was lack of understanding of those harmonic resonances that caused the collapse of the three cooling towers at Ferrybridge in the ’60s.
DaveE.

March 21, 2012 12:11 pm

Robert Brown says:
March 21, 2012 at 11:27 am
My difficulty is that I keep waiting for a hypothesis in there and one never quite appears.
Patience is one of the seven ‘heavenly’ virtues.; forgive the pun.
Couple of years now, I am waiting for others to have their go first.
For the moment just a graphic preview:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GTC.htm
the words will come later.

Robert
March 21, 2012 12:13 pm

Maybe the influence on the earths magnetosphere could account for possibility number 1) “The effect manifests itself in some other way not yet observed.”, or has been observed 45 years ago: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1967SSRv….6..655S
Robert

March 21, 2012 12:13 pm

Robert Brown – It is now abundantly clear that the Younger Dryas was an impact caused aberration . http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/03/01/1110614109.abstract

March 21, 2012 12:19 pm

Since February 2010 I have submitted my discovery of the relation between the solar tide functions and the terrestrial climate functions to climate authorities and blogs.
Phil Jones, http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/people/facstaff/jonesp
Eduardo Zorita, http://coast.gkss.de/staff/zorita/
Thomas Edwards, http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/~twdedwar/
Anders Moberg, http://people.su.se/~amobe/research.htm
Ulf Büntgen, http://www.buentgen.com/index.html
Nicola Scafetta, http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/
Christoph Spötl, http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kfq/spoetl.html
Fritz Vahrenholt, http://www.kaltesonne.de/?page_id=49
Sebastian Lüning, http://www.kaltesonne.de/?page_id=49
Robert Ehrlich, http://mason.gmu.edu/~rehrlich/
Henrik Svensmark, http://www.space.dtu.dk/English/Staff/All.aspx?lg=showcommon&id=38287&type=person
Nicole Vollweiler, http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/presse/ruca/ruca07-3/klima.html
Leif Svalgaard, http://www.leif.org/
Luboš Motl, http://motls.blogspot.de/
Roy Spencer, http://www.drroyspencer.com
Anthony Watts, http://wattsupwiththat.com/
There where always ignorance on my discovery. I do not know, what the reason is, that science people, who are looking to the processes on the Sun because of climate relevant functions are practicing silence.
I have submitted a guest posting to WUWT on this discovery without any reply. Later I have put the posting in a pdf file and published it on my site. My paper from August 2010 is known here > http://www.volker-doormann.org/ghi_solar_s.pdf <.
I have mentioned in this blog in many comments to postings of Dr. N.S. but although I have informed him by email in 2010 on my discovery he never has replied to my email and not on comments in this WUWT blog until today.
Some text from my page: In February 11th 2010, some eight years after the discovering of Quaoar by Chad Trujillo und Michael E. Brown, while looking to the common cycle of the couple Quaoar and Pluto, and their strange gymnastic around the sun, it was obvious to me, that the triples of conjunctions and oppositions are connected with Eddy’s warm climate phases and the triples of squares (90°) are connected to cold climate phases like the so called “Little ice age’ in the Maunder minimum. Simply by folding the heliocentric aspect angles of Quaoar and Pluto at 90° the Geometric Harmonic Index (GHI) was born, and could be compared first with an adapted curve Eddy has outlined in his paper. Especially the two minimum around 1500 CE and 1700 CE are showing precise coincidences with two of the three Square aspects in the cold Maunder minimum, but also the warm times of Rom in the first century CE and the 13th century CE. Because of the strange pattern of this common cycle of Quaoar and Pluto, it is not easy to find the time length of the period. But from ephemeris now available for ±3000 years, a length of 1827 years can be estimated from three cycles in total. It was clear that tide effects we have on earth have mostly the same aspect pattern from sun and moon, as this unknown mechanism. But physicians tell us that the masses and distances are mostly irrelevant for tide effects on the sun surface for such far objects like the couple of Quaoar and Pluto beyond Neptune. Nonetheless it is well known that, because an opposition of the couple of Sun and Moon results in the very same way as a conjunction of the couple for the height of the tide mostly two times daily, this halves the length of the period down to 913.5 years, and comes near to the estimated cycle length of roughly 1000 years, which J. A. Eddy has seen from the 14C data. Also two of the three maximum values in the GHI are appearing in the 22nd and 23rd century, from conjunction aspects of Quaoar and Pluto. “
After N.S. has stated that his cycle gymnastic is limited on a ~60 year cycle because of no acceptable proxies for longer times, he now cames up with a 983 year sinusoid function pasting in phase to known 2k year proxies.
I have prepared some weeks ago a comparison graph for Frederik Ljungqvist:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/comparison_ghi_l.jpg
and shown here for nothing.
I have given up to explain ad nausem why this math gymnastic is hobby handycraft but not a valid method of science.
It is not my point to discuss anathema disciplines in science here; it’s just to understand some ideas from history http://doormann.tripod.com/astroclima.htm (mostly German)
It is not my thing to speak here as guest on an integer behavior, but it is not my understanding of respect and discussion culture.
Have fun with his stuff.
V.

Jean Parisot
March 21, 2012 12:21 pm

Is the inverse relationship considered? (I can’t read the entire article on my phone.) Have similiar cyclical solar influences driven mass and orbits over time in addition to climate changes?

Steve from Rockwood
March 21, 2012 12:56 pm

When I plug the values for mass (m1=sun), (m2=planet) and radius (distance from planet to sun) I get Jupiter as having the largest gravitational force followed by Venus, then Jupiter then Earth. I didn’t check the radius or mass values for accuracy, but the force from Jupiter would seem to be greater than any other planet by a factor of 10 times. Also I did the calculations in Excel so not sure what happens when you use these very large numbers.
Planet Force (N) Ratio of Jupiter to Other planets
Jupiter 4.21E+29 1.0000
Saturn 3.75E+28 0.0890
Neptune 6.80E+26 0.0016
Uranus 1.42E+27 0.0034
Earth 3.59E+28 0.0852
Venus 5.60E+28 0.1331
Mars 1.66E+27 0.0039
Mercury 1.32E+28 0.0314
Pluto 4.82E+22 0.0000

March 21, 2012 12:58 pm

Nicola Scafetta says:
March 21, 2012 at 11:50 am
Not really, Leif. The discussion just started.

Looks DOA to me. You might put it back on life support by publishing the reviews you got for the first version.

March 21, 2012 12:59 pm

Leif Svalgaard says:
March 21, 2012 at 11:54 am
Of course, the planets [mostly Jupiter] change the Earth orientation and orbit on time scales of tens of thousands of years and hence the climate. This has nothing to do with the Sun and we should all keep the distinction and the time scales in mind.

Agreed, Milankovitch cycles has nothing to do with the Sun.

Steve from Rockwood
March 21, 2012 1:10 pm

Tom in Florida says:
March 21, 2012 at 11:37 am

If Jupiter can have a measurable influence on the Sun why does it not have a measurable influence on the Earth during appropriate times when both are on the same side? If it does has the influence been measured to be what? BTW I did observe the Jupiter/Venus show last week. I did actually feel my heart strings being pulled just knowing what I was looking at.

Newtons law of attraction explains the gravitational influence between Earth and Jupiter. Because both masses are taken into consideration, the force will be much less for the Earth given its mass is six orders of magnitude less than the sun.
F = G*m1*m2/r^2
So if my numbers are correct the force between Jupiter and Sun versus Jupiter and Earth is 4.1E+29 versus 1.94E+24 (N) or 217,000 times higher for Jupiter-Sun.

gallopingcamel
March 21, 2012 1:25 pm

Leif Svalgaard,
“The paper is crap and based on cyclomanic derivations”.
Sometimes one has to put up with a great deal of ridicule to jolt science out of a rut. Poor Wegman endured some really vile treatment before people realised he was right and by then it was too late to apologize.
Those “better journals” you mention (e.g. Nature?) regularly publish junk science based on dendrochronology or models based on CO2 driving global climate.
No matter that the tree-mometers defy history, ice core records and much more. No matter that the CGMs have no hindcasting skill or predictive skill.

gallopingcamel
March 21, 2012 1:27 pm

Lief,
I forgot to thank you for that interesting information on measuring doppler shift on large stars.

March 21, 2012 1:31 pm

Leif Svalgaard says: March 21, 2012 at 12:58 pm
“Looks DOA to me. ”
Not to me, Leif. Not to many people.
Try to be more humble in the future, your criticism was filled with ludicrous statements.

Crispin in Johannesburg
March 21, 2012 1:35 pm

@Carsten Arnholm, Norway
>…The Moon is approximately 0.0025 AU from the Earth.
>I believe the tallest tidal wave on the Sun is in the order of 1mm high.
+++++++++++
Is that if the sun were a liquid? What if it were a tenuous gas? More than 1 mm? What if it built up harmonically for a few thousand years?
First there are resonant waves which build up as Jupiter and Saturn align then depart. The whole point about resonant waves is they are much higher than they would be if the gravitational pull was suddenly exerted once. So, everyone calculating 0.06% of the Earth-moon stuff….it is not only about the strength of the pull, it is about the resonance. Further, it may be the influence on the magnetic system of the sun, and that of course affects the heliosphere, which affects the protection from GRC, which affects the rate of cosmic ray impact on Earth’s atmosphere, which affects cloud formation, which powerfully affects temperature.
It was once considered that the Earth’s climate system was completely determined internally. By now the effect of solar activity is agreed, through the indirect mechanism of the heliosphere (perhaps other things too, but apparently not so much the TSI value). So what is the next level of openmindness? If we find the large planets are capable of shaking the sun up a little in a rhythmic fashion, how long would we have to wait for recognition of this reality?
Large planets ‘pulling together’ cyclically
=> gravitational jerking around of the sun, (an object perhaps akin to a marble – the heavy centre – floating in the middle of a balloon where the balloon gets moved with respect to the marble)
=> undescribed mechanism because no one is sure
=> variation in the magnetic field strength of the sun
=> change in the radius of the heliosphere
=> change in the GCR flux hitting the Earth
=> change in cloud cover and duration
=> change in global temperature
Is this really so difficult to follow? The correlation is a heck of a lot better than some mumbo-jumbo from climate models predicting more water vapour in the stratosphere that turns out not to be there.

Scarface
March 21, 2012 1:37 pm

Hi Willis,
I do take your analysis on this (and other issues as well) very serious.
But, Scafetta is trying to find a relationship, with numbers that are between certain values. Isn’t that the same problem as when one is to find relationships with solar cycles, which also do not have a really fixed period of time?

Steve from Rockwood
March 21, 2012 1:57 pm

In my earlier post I used km instead of m. My apologies.
F = G*m1*m2/r^2, mass in Kg and distance in meters, F in Newtons.
Jupiter #1
Saturn #2
(The % is the ratio of planet’s to Jupiter’s effect on Sun)
Jupiter 4.21E+23 100.000%
Saturn 1.26E+23 29.941%
Neptune 2.27E+22 5.395%
Uranus 1.92E+22 4.572%
Earth 1.32E+21 0.315%
Venus 1.08E+21 0.256%
Mars 1.42E+20 0.034%
Mercury 7.32E+19 0.017%
Pluto 2.77E+18 0.001%
Earth-Jupiter 1.84E+19 N or 22,900 times less than Sun-Jupiter attraction
If Jupiter and Saturn were in alignment the Force could be 130% versus 70%. Assuming that the force is not negligible this would be a huge change (almost a doubling of the net force).

March 21, 2012 2:00 pm

Professor Scafetta you might consider that with the cyclical nature of earth’s obliquity that the solar insolation available is being modulated by another factor which may go a long way to explaining why planetary motion affects earth’s climate. Based on what we now know about the cosmic ray link to cloud formation in regards to the solar wind’s output shielding the solar system from galactic cosmic rays, maybe we have over looked a more mechanistic explanation here.
Since the earth’s obliquity varies from 22.1 to 24.5 degree (regulated by the moon) does it not stand to reason that the earth’s magnetosphere ALSO positions itself relative to the sun in the same angle? If so, is it not reasonable to expect that different angles of magnetosphere orientations have greater or lesser shielding values to galactic cosmic rays? Hence as the magnetosphere decreases in orientation to the sun MORE galactic cosmic rays are allowed to strike the earth’s atmosphere inducing greater cloud cover. It may be causation that satisfies Anthony’s #2 correlation you have documented.

lgl
March 21, 2012 2:05 pm

comparisons with other stellar systems where the effects are calculated to be millions of times stronger
Forget this old red herring. The point is Jupiter is accelerating parts of the object it is orbiting, mainly Earth and Venus. Then the rest of the object, the Sun, has to counter that acceleration.
So when looking at other systems, is there a large planet AND smaller inner planet(s)?

March 21, 2012 2:06 pm

Nicola Scafetta says:
March 21, 2012 at 1:31 pm
Not to many people
Sure, you have your sycophants among the unwashed masses.
But, show us what the reviewers said.

March 21, 2012 2:11 pm

Crispin in Johannesburg says:
March 21, 2012 at 1:35 pm
gravitational jerking around of the sun
Not even Nicola believes this. The planets do not jerk the Sun around, nor the other way around. All bodies are in free fall in the solar system [Galaxy, Universe] and feel no forces [except tides] just like an astronaut on a spacewalk is not jerked around by the very massive Earth just a hundred miles below.

Joachim Seifert
March 21, 2012 4:00 pm

To Crispin in Jo’burg:
Do not believe Leif, he knows about the Sun but nothing about planetary orbits.
The orbits are not a free fall but describe difficult spirals as all astronomers
know (“jerking in space”) except Leif….he urgently need some introductory
lectures on astronomy…
just to quote from an astronomical website about the Earth’s orbit; “is having J-2
cross track motion equations of a harmonic oscillator….” and not like a motion
when Leif drops his wine glass….sorry to say…
JS

timebandit
March 21, 2012 2:18 pm

Leif Svalgaard says: March 21, 2012 11:42 am
Not really, Leif. The discussion just started.
MMMM … Almost sounds like the science is settled???

Rosco
March 21, 2012 2:23 pm

We seem to have evidence that the Earth has been in a cycle of relatively long glaciation timespans interspersed with relatively short interglacials.
There are many arguements about the cause for this.
Landscheidt’s work is one attempt to find some reason.
Like it or not it seems equally credible to “greenhouse gases” creating energy, cold objects warming warmer objects, trapping energy permanently, solar insolation is one quarter of the solar constant, there is a solar “constant”, getting the factor of four wrong, relying on models which disagree with observation, faking model’s mistakes, adjusting the temperature records, ignoring urban heat island effects, making obviously outrageous predictions based on no evidence, ignoring same outrageous predictions when they fail and trying to hide them, etc etc.
Perhaps Landscheidt did favour his hypothesis but he has at least a few “runs” on the board while the IPCC is still batting zero.
His prediction from 2004 was that the Earth would cool to a major minimum around 2030. The only “stay” to this cooling will be ElNino events, however he suggested LaNina will become the norm and ElNino will be weak or non-existent.
From 2009\2010 Australia has followed his prediction with a return to very wet events (LaNina brings rain to Eastern Australia) three years in a row and we’re still in the middle of one in mid Autumn 2012 – it ought to be easing off now, it ought to be easing off now…..
Another few years ought to demonstrate if his predictive value is real – even if you disagree with his hypothesis.
But it makes as much sense as what is promoted by the IPCc – especially the line that the CO2 already in the atmosphere will prevent a return to glaciation. This has not been observed in the past proxies BUT would certainly be more beneficial than harmful if it were possible – provided we don’t burn in hellfire first.

Editor
March 21, 2012 2:35 pm

Robert Brown says:
March 21, 2012 at 11:27 am

I leave you to draw your own conclusion as to whether this is just trivial curve fitting. As for me, I see absolutely no scientific value in this at all.

I mostly agree, Willis, although I would be less vehement about the “no scientific value at all” bit.

Thanks, Robert. OK, I’ll bite. What scientific value is there is projecting three cycles with the following lengths:
a) kind of the same length as an average of the spring tidal period of “Jupiter and Saturn” (presumably combined, although Jupiter is way larger than Saturn), but actually different.
b) a length that may or may not be associated to a quasi 11-year solar dynamo cycle but who knows, and
c) the sidereal period of Jupiter.
You’ll have to point out the scientific value in that, because I can’t see it.
Bear in mind that last time we heard from Scafetta he was loudly insisting that one of the crucial cycles was (2X + Y) / 4, with X and Y being lunar precessions … but now that cycle has disappeared entirely, I guess the moon is no longer in ascendancy … science at its finest.
Where’s the value?
w.

Editor
March 21, 2012 2:37 pm

timebandit says:
March 21, 2012 at 2:18 pm

Leif Svalgaard says: March 21, 2012 11:42 am

Not really, Leif. The discussion just started.

MMMM … Almost sounds like the science is settled???

Actually, in Scafetta’s work it’s the lack of science that’s settled …
w.

March 21, 2012 2:37 pm

timebandit says:
March 21, 2012 at 2:18 pm
Not really, Leif. The discussion just started.
You are way too late for the boat. It sailed long ago.

Editor
March 21, 2012 2:48 pm

Joachim Seifert says:
March 21, 2012 at 12:09 pm

To Willis and to others interested in the progress of astronomical forcings:
Willis has the tendency of getting lost in smallish effects and starts to dicker
whether a cycle is 11.97 or 11.98 in length….but….he loses the oversight over
the whole battleground at the same time……

Last time Dr. Scafetta was loudly insisting that one of the critical cycles was (2X + Y)/4, where X and Y were lunar precession cycles. Now, that’s all disappeared entirely … the Moon vanishes, and you call that a “smallish effect”?
If a an approximately 9 year cycle is off by a tenth of a year, in two millennia that adds up to a couple hundred years difference in the result … how is that a “smallish effect”?
Sure, you are welcome to overlook all of that and acclaim Dr. Scafetta as the new scientific messiah.
Me, I pay attention to the details as well as the large picture. When a man trades in the Moon for the spring tides of Jupiter and Saturn, I tend to notice …
w.

Joachim Seifert
March 21, 2012 4:20 pm

Willis, no getting excited….. a true scientist sometimes overshoots, this may be
the case with the Moon…..trial and error in virgin lands where nobody has ploughed
yet, or if, then only by light scratching on the surface…….
but here its different: He found the rich mine, the 60 year cycle,…..
let him drop the smallish stuff and let him concentrate on the heavy guns…..
Let the Moon watchers also do some contribution: Moon&CLIMATE, good topic….
We should not overload Nick Scafetta so he can stay in shape and focus on the
big stuff…..
Cheers JS

March 21, 2012 3:12 pm

Steve from Rockwood says:
March 21, 2012 at 12:56 pm
When I plug the values for mass (m1=sun), (m2=planet) and radius (distance from planet to sun) I get Jupiter as having the largest gravitational force followed by Venus, then Jupiter then Earth. I didn’t check the radius or mass values for accuracy, but the force from Jupiter would seem to be greater than any other planet by a factor of 10 times.

As long as it is a fact that heliocentric synodic double frequencies of 6.3 oscillations per calendar year from the couple of Mercury and Earth effects the global sea level oscillations with the same frequency, you (and other) can learn that Sir Newton’s gravitation idea has nothing to do with the relations between solar synodic functions and the sea level oscillations.
http://www.volker-doormann.org/Sea_level_vs_solar_tides1.htm
This becomes also clear, because far distance small bodies like Quaorar and Pluto or Neptune have the main impact on the terrestrial climate magnitudes.
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/ghi2_x.jpg
So called heliocentric ‘tide functions’ showing tide like geometries, but that does not mean that Sir Newton’s gravitation, what ever that is, must be the cause for the relation. Moreover it is not compatible with the observed real geometries.
It should be discussed why tide like solar functions from objects with high densities despite of a far or near distance can explain terrestrial climate functions and frequencies and phases.
V.

Kasuha
March 21, 2012 3:35 pm

My first impression on this was that I can see return of medieval astrology – depending on which zodiacal sign which planet occupies, good or bad things will happen.
But now I want to be a bit more serious.
No, I don’t think Jupiter or Saturn can have any significant influence on Sun cycles. I just don’t see any way they could have any non-negligible influence there, considering the amplitude of their tidal forces compared with how violent and largely chaotic processes does the sun produce itself. Similarity between sun cycle length and Jupiter orbital period is most likely just a coincidence.
What I am not so sure about, though, is planet’s influence on Earth orbit. This influence is not too great, Jupiter’s mass is 0.1% of Sun’s and Saturn is half of that. But it still means Earth’s orbit is sometimes a bit more eccentric and sometimes a bit more round, causing greater or smaller variations in incoming sun energy during the year – and, due to the fact that radiation decreases with square of distance, also small variations in the integrated energy income over the year. No, I don’t mean Milankovich cycles. I mean “real-time” tidal deformations of the orbit caused simply by the presence of the planet at certain relative position to the Earth’s elliptical orbit. Yes I know these changes are small, maybe in order of 0.1%. But it still is more than what planets do to the Sun and I have already learned that changes in order of 1% in many Earth climate parameters are considered huge. Has anyone looked at this?

phlogiston
March 21, 2012 4:22 pm

I asked Dr. Leif Svalgaard about his views on this paper and he replied with this:
The real test of all this cannot come from the proxies we have because the time scales are too short, but from comparisons with other stellar systems where the effects are calculated to be millions of times stronger [because the planets are huge and MUCH closer to the star]. No correlations have been found so far.
See slide 19 of my AGU presentation: …

To this I would echo what Olavi says:
March 21, 2012 at 8:43 am
Leif said, that there is no found tidal effects in exoplanet systems. How long we have examine exoplanets, and is it easy to find those effects?
What Leif is trying on here is perhaps the most extreme case you could find of argumentum ad ignorantium. He is saying, in effect, that “we should expect to be able to detect climate change on distant, non solar system planets hundreds or light-years away, under the influence of other large planets in the same system”. If we cant – then we conclude that barycentric effects cannot affect climate.
Where can you start in addressing this? We have enough difficulty as it is assessing the presence or absence of climate change on our OWN PLANET – but we can happily use our failure to detect climate change on some distant planet only detectable as a miniscule variation in light from a star – as evidence against any barycentric effects?
Leif – WHAT PLANET ARE YOU ON??
O yes and he finishes with – surprise surprise – a plug for his own conference presentation! Hooray!

Editor
March 21, 2012 5:06 pm

Joachim Seifert says:
March 21, 2012 at 4:20 pm

Willis, no getting excited….. a true scientist sometimes overshoots, this may be
the case with the Moon…..trial and error in virgin lands where nobody has ploughed
yet, or if, then only by light scratching on the surface…….
but here its different: He found the rich mine, the 60 year cycle,…..
let him drop the smallish stuff and let him concentrate on the heavy guns…..
Let the Moon watchers also do some contribution: Moon&CLIMATE, good topic….
We should not overload Nick Scafetta so he can stay in shape and focus on the
big stuff…..
Cheers JS

Ah, yes, the famous 60 year cycle that is three Jupiter/Saturn synodic cycles, three because after three cycles it kind of returns to somewhere near where it started, except it’s off by 9 degrees … that’s real convincing, Joachim, science at its finest.
Spare me. He had no reason to pick the moon. He had no reason to get rid of the moon. This is curve fitting of the highest order, and is useless.
As to “overloading” Nicola, this is just the normal scientific process. Someone makes a claim, and other scientists try to find fault with it … sorry you and Nicola don’t like it.
I’m sure you and he would prefer a love-fest of sycophants and toadies, but that’s not gonna happen. Nicola has to face the questions just like any other scientist, especially a scientist making the ridiculous claim that his cycles are “astronomically based” because they are kinda sorta near the same length as (2X + Y)/4 where X and Y are lunar cycles … riiiight …
w.

March 21, 2012 5:12 pm

phlogiston says:
March 21, 2012 at 4:22 pm
Leif said, that there is no found tidal effects in exoplanet systems. How long we have examine exoplanets, and is it easy to find those effects?
What Leif is trying on here is perhaps the most extreme case you could find of argumentum ad ignorantium. He is saying, in effect, that “we should expect to be able to detect climate change on distant, non solar system planets hundreds or light-years away, under the influence of other large planets in the same system”. If we cant – then we conclude that barycentric effects cannot affect climate.

The planets in question are close to their star, so their effect, if any, would be very large, and since the orbital period is short we don’t have to observe for hundreds of years. And it is not a question of ‘cant’ but of ‘dont’. The usual counterargument [which has also been used in this thread] is that perhaps we need the planets to be far away for them to have effect: a sort of homeopathy on a stellar scale: the weaker the impulse, the greater the effect.

Ninderthana
March 21, 2012 5:13 pm

Many a break through in Science has been blocked because supporters of the status quo gleefully put up paper-tiger arguments and then smash them down. They gain great comfort from the fact that they can so easily overcome their own self-created weak (paper-tiger) arguments, not realizing how ridiculous they look chasing their own tails.
One such argument is that put by Leif Svalgaard. He creates a paper-tiger argument by proposing that much stronger planetary tides in other stellar systems outside our Solar System show no correlation between stellar activity and planetary motion ergo – planetary cycles have nothing to do with solar activity.
However, any self-respecting scientist would have no problem seeing this silly argument for what it really is – as an obvious paper tiger.
Image that you have a person that is slowly swinging back and forth on a swing. The swing has a natural frequency of about five seconds i.e. ideally a person pushing the swing will be able to push the swing higher if they stand back and gently push on the swing roughly once every five, as the swing comes back up to where they are standing.
Any logical person would realize that it they wanted the person on the swing to go higher and higher that would have to match the natural resonance of the swing. Any attempt to try and push the swing half, a quarter or even three-quarters of the way through a swing would quickly destroy
any build up of energy/motion within the system.
Many physical systems have natural resonances e.g. the convective layers of solar-type stars.
It is very likely they these natural resonant frequencies are measured in years or decades and not days. Hence, it is scientifically stupid to argue that if you were to force the convective layer of a solar-type star with strong tides with periods 1 – 100 days you should get a much greater response in the convective envelop than if you forced it with much weaker tidal forces with periods of years to decades.
Leif may as well argue that you cannot push a person higher and higher on a swing (with a natural resonance of say five seconds) because randomly hitting the swing with sledge hammer every one to seconds produces no discernible swing.
In other words, Leif’s paper tiger arguments are just that – weak arguments put up by Leif to re-confirm his own well-established pseudo-scientific prejudices.

populartechnology
March 21, 2012 5:14 pm

Why can’t Dr. Scafetta’s papers be presented without added commentary from Leif? The paper already passed peer-review, let people read it unbiased by Leif’s comments in the main article. Everything relating to solar physics does not revolve around Leif Svalgaard. This is getting old.

Steve from Rockwood
March 21, 2012 5:20 pm

I continue to post wrong values for Force of gravity. Can I blame Excel?
Planet Mass (Kg) Dist (m) Force (N)
Jupiter 1.90E+27 7.73E+11 4.21E+23
Venus 4.87E+24 1.07E+11 5.61E+22
Saturn 5.68E+26 1.42E+12 3.75E+22
Earth 5.97E+24 1.49E+11 3.59E+22
Mercury 3.30E+23 5.76E+10 1.32E+22
Mars 6.42E+23 2.26E+11 1.66E+21
Uranus 8.68E+25 2.85E+12 1.42E+21
Neptune 1.02E+26 4.50E+12 6.70E+20
Pluto 1.25E+22 5.87E+12 4.82E+16
Sun 1.99E+30
So, if I’m correct, Jupiter has the largest force on the Sun, followed by Venus. What does it mean? To me the planet with the strongest force will cause the largest gravitational pull (tide). The only weakness is I’m using mean distance. Am I way off track?
Volker, you’re going to have to convince me that Pluto has an effect on anything, given both its distance away and small relative mass. It has less mass than Mars and is more than ten times further away from the Sun.

GlynnMhor
March 21, 2012 5:26 pm

“… comparisons with other stellar systems where the effects are calculated to be millions of times stronger [because the planets are huge and MUCH closer to the star]. No correlations have been found so far.”
I’m not convinced that we know enough about solar cycles to be able to explain how they are initiated and by what, nor how they might be different in other stars. Some stars are strongly variable, for example, while others less so and still others apparently not at all.
It is conceivable, for example, that a large planet near a star could so disrupt whatever process it is that causes our solar cycles to change that those dynamic changes never occur.
It remains that there does appear to be a relationship between perturbations in the net solar angular momentum and the appearance of Grand Solar Minima like the Wolf, Spörer, Maunder and Dalton… as well as the modern Landscheidt Minimum which is arguably just beginning:
http://www.landscheidt.info/

Z
March 21, 2012 5:31 pm

2. The effect is coincidental but not causative.
An effect that is predicatable that is co-incidental with an effect that is not predictable, will suddenly render the second effect predictable. This is often as important than any notional mechanism (which often turns out to be wrong). The ancients had no idea what caused tides, but the prediction of them was exceedingly important.
There seems to be a bias here against any work which doesn’t come with a “cause”, no matter how ludicrous. Except Livingston and Penn, who quite freely admit they have no idea what’s going on, yet they’ve ended up with a almost-mystical free pass on it here.
The assertion about the exo-planets misses the point about the barycentric idea. The point is that the barycentre moves within the star, with corresponding effects. A single big planet orbiting a big sun has a stable barycentre, so under the theory you should not expect to see any periodic changes. This is seen by observations. What you should be looking for are 2 or more planets which are a similar order of magnitude in mass, and have differing orbits (no twirling dumbells).
Questions: Are there any trinary star systems? How stable are their stars? The mass revolving the star should not need to be “unlit” for the effect to manifest, and multi-star systems have better lighting than most..
Inside the sun, there is the core which has an outward force to it.(photon pressure) and the surface which has an inward force to it (usually) due to gravity (magnetics and centripetal forces also play a part). This means that somewhere in the middle, there is a place where the net force due to the sun is zero. This “free floating” band will attempt to orbit the barycentre with the rest of the solar system and not the centre of the sun.
Questions: Where is it? Does it have a name? How big is it (i.e. the volume of the 3D “shell” where the net force from the sun is less than the net force from the rest of the solar system)? Does the barycentre ever enter this shell?
The planets will also produce “tides” upon this band, making a surface truly “free fall” (i.e. the net effect of the sun and the solar system will be zero). A particle below this band (and feeling an outward force), may find itself thrust above the band without moving (and hence feel an inward force). If it was doing something finely balanced, then it isn’t any more.
Question: How big are these tides at this “free fall” area?
I can’t say I’m convinced by the barycentric idea, but I wouldn’t shoot it down because of the use of exclamation marks.

Editor
March 21, 2012 5:33 pm

populartechnology says:
March 21, 2012 at 5:14 pm

Why can’t Dr. Scafetta’s papers be presented without added commentary from Leif? The paper already passed peer-review, let people read it unbiased by Leif’s comments in the main article. Everything relating to solar physics does not revolve around Leif Svalgaard. This is getting old.

Because this is science, and anyone can propose objections to a scientific theory. Your attempt to censor Leif is a typical tactic of those positing pseudo-scientific theories.
You don’t want people to object to Dr. Scafetta’s outrageous claims? You want nothing but support?
w.
PS—If you think it actually means something that the paper passed peer-review, you need more help than we can give you here …

Ninderthana
March 21, 2012 5:39 pm

Leif said:
Some starspots are huge: http://www.noao.edu/noao/noaonews/dec99/node2.html and we can today easily measure stellar activity.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What he doesn’t tell you is that there is almost no overlap between the set of solar-like stars that have measurable stellar activity (e.g. [CaII] emissions) and the set of solar-like stars that have known planetary systems.
Why? For the simple reason that until just recently, the bulk of the planetary systems discovered have been detected using the absorption line doppler-shift method. This measures the radial motion of the star caused by the motion of its surrounding massive planets. The doppler-shifts are so small in many cases that it is only possible to detect them in stellar systems that do not have a
lot of back-ground “noise” produced by stellar-activity on the star’s surface i.e the stellar activity
produces up-and-down motions of the stars surface that can mimic the radial motion of the star caused by the planetary forces acting on the star.
Needless to say Leif will fire back that current planetary searches (e.g. Herschel) are getting around this problem but what he will leave out is that it will take another decade of two before
enough data is collected to to figure out what is really going on in these external solar systems.

March 21, 2012 5:40 pm

Ninderthana says:
March 21, 2012 at 5:13 pm
Any logical person would realize that it they wanted the person on the swing to go higher and higher that would have to match the natural resonance of the swing.
And it so happens that the natural resonances of the sun are just those that match Nicola’s several planetary cycles, right?
Many physical systems have natural resonances e.g. the convective layers of solar-type stars.
Those seem to have a period around 5 minutes, perhaps you could produce links to papers demonstrating convective resonances in sun-like stars of the order of decades or centuries. You are welcome to educate us here.

March 21, 2012 5:44 pm

Willis Eschenbach says:
March 21, 2012 at 5:33 pm
PS—If you think it actually means something that the paper passed peer-review, you need more help than we can give you here …
And the paper in question actually failed peer-review the first time around. When this happens the author often resubmits to a journal with a lower standard of quality or with only peripheral emphasis on the subject area of the claims.

populartechnology
March 21, 2012 5:44 pm

Willis, please quote where I stated that Leif should be censored. You seem really confused about what I suggested in the main article. Try reading more carefully next time.

Ninderthana
March 21, 2012 5:52 pm

Leif said:
Without violating any ethics, I can say that I was a reviewer of an earlier version of this paper submitted to a better journal and the judgement of several reviewers was: “The paper is crap and based on cyclomanic derivations”.
Translation into English: Leif admits that he has closed mind and he is proud of it!

Editor
March 21, 2012 6:04 pm

populartechnology says:
March 21, 2012 at 5:44 pm

Willis, please quote where I stated that Leif should be censored. You seem really confused about what I suggested in the main article. Try reading more carefully next time.

Why can’t Dr. Scafetta’s papers be presented without added commentary from Leif?

Short of censoring Leif, how were you planning to accomplish that?
All the best,
w.

populartechnology
March 21, 2012 6:09 pm

Willis, the word censored did not appear in that quote and you have instead chosen to butcher the context of my statement for your strawman argument. Your reading comprehension problems are not my concern. I was referring to the main article not the comments. I am not surprised you would jump insane conclusions by carelessly reading what people write. This sort of behavior is getting fairly embarrassing for you.

Bill H
March 21, 2012 6:11 pm

I find it interesting that magnetic envelopes caused by the planets and other bodies is so easily dismissed. Paraphrasing Tall Bloke, a weak pulse which repeats in a rhythmic fashion can demolish hardened steel.. To write them off as insignificant is unwise…
Just look around you today…something very rhythmic is pulsing the earth to its core, causing increased earthquake activity along with increasing intensity of those quakes… If the Earth is being pulsed by magnetic waves ( and it is) then the terrestrial reaction is not just earth responding… the star we call our sun is affected as well. To think otherwise is foolish.
Very interesting to watch some throw this away, even when the results are very real, observable,and quantifiable.. It s sad to see some think their “knowledge” is greater than everyone else and thumb their nose up.. We get to much of this from warmists and alarmists… time for a good look in the mirror..
One simply has to hit a nuclear reactor with high pulsed magnetism to see it disrupt the reaction.. our sun is no different..

March 21, 2012 6:14 pm

Z says:
March 21, 2012 at 5:31 pm
The point is that the barycentre moves within the star, with corresponding effects.
the point is that the barycenter has no effect [not even Nicola believes that]
What you should be looking for are 2 or more planets which are a similar order of magnitude in mass, and have differing orbits (no twirling dumbells).
How about just looking at my diagram at the top of the page…
Inside the sun, there is the core which has an outward force to it.(photon pressure) and the surface which has an inward force to it (usually) due to gravity (magnetics and centripetal forces also play a part). This means that somewhere in the middle, there is a place where the net force due to the sun is zero.
This is complete nonsense. At every point from the center to the surface the inward pressure [gravity] balances exactly the outward pressure [of a hot gas]. This is called hydrostatic equilibrium: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrostatic_equilibrium

Legatus
March 21, 2012 6:18 pm

Milankovitch cycles appears to explain full scale ice ages, however, it does not explain little ice ages. These appear, from what little data we have, to coincide with periods of low sunspots, and possibly with periods of higher cosmic radiation. So full blown ice ages may be not related to changes of the suns performance, yet mini ice ages appear to be strongly related to exactly that.
The current article under discussion tries to find out exactly why the sun changes. it may or may not succeed (I would lean toward not). However, something is causing the sun to change, and we need to find out what and how (and how that effects climate).
Currently, I would say that we do not really understand why the sun changes, what causes it to go into active or passive phases. One reason for this can be that we really don’t know what is going on under it’s surface, or even what is under there, especially at the core. Recent unexplainable activity by the sun has at least shown present science that we know a lot less about it than we thought we do.
So, I would have to complement the author on at least trying, however, I would say, back to the drawing board.

u.k.(us)
March 21, 2012 6:22 pm

Willis Eschenbach says:
March 21, 2012 at 5:06 pm
==================
Ok,
Willis, you have taken over another thread, as if it was your own.
FYI, without WUWT, you, along with the rest of us would be lost in the wilderness.
Let’s not mess that up.

Ninderthana
March 21, 2012 6:22 pm

Leif said,
Many physical systems have natural resonances e.g. the convective layers of solar-type stars.
Those seem to have a period around 5 minutes, perhaps you could produce links to papers demonstrating convective resonances in sun-like stars of the order of decades or centuries. You are welcome to educate us here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How about David Hathaway and the 11 year Solar meridional flow?:
Science 12 March 2010: Vol. 327 no. 5971 pp. 1350-1352
Variations in the Sun’s Meridional Flow over a Solar Cycle
David H. Hathaway, and Lisa Rightmire
The Sun’s meridional flow is an axisymmetric flow that is generally directed from its equator toward its poles at the surface. The structure and strength of the meridional flow determine both the strength of the Sun’s polar magnetic field and the intensity of sunspot cycles. We determine the meridional flow speed of magnetic features on the Sun using data from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. The average flow is poleward at all latitudes up to 75°, which suggests that it extends to the poles. It was faster at sunspot cycle minimum than at maximum and substantially faster on the approach to the current minimum than it was at the last solar minimum. This result may help to explain why this solar activity minimum is so peculiar.
Oh, I forgot, Science one of those lesser journal that you spit on.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OR
The Sun’s Shallow Meridional Circulation
David H. Hathaway
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
(Submitted on 8 Mar 2011 (v1), last revised 29 Mar 2011 (this version, v2))
The Sun’s global meridional circulation is evident as a slow poleward flow at its surface. This flow is observed to carry magnetic elements poleward – producing the Sun’s polar magnetic fields as a key part of the 11-year sunspot cycle. Current theories for the sunspot cycle assume that this surface flow is part of a circulation which sinks inward at the poles and turns equatorward at depths below 100 Mm. Here we use the advection of the Sun’s convection cells by the meridional flow to map the flow velocity in latitude and depth. Our measurements show the largest cells clearly moving equatorward at depths below 35 Mm – the base of the Sun’s surface shear layer. This surprisingly shallow return flow indicates the need for substantial revisions to solar/stellar dynamo theory.
Arrrh… of course, Solar and Stellar Astrophysics is just another fly-by night journal,
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OR
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_star
About two-thirds of all variable stars appear to be pulsating. In the 1930s astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington showed that the mathematical equations that describe the interior of a star may lead to instabilities that cause a star to pulsate. The most common type of instability is related to oscillations in the degree of ionization in outer, convective layers of the star.
I could go on and on….

March 21, 2012 6:35 pm

Ninderthana says:
March 21, 2012 at 5:52 pm
Leif admits that he has closed mind and he is proud of it!
when it comes to crap, from Nicola, from you, or from anybody else, I have a good crap-detector and am duly proud of how well it works. It would be refreshing if you would restrict yourself to science or at least pseudo-science, rather than continue down the stinking ad-hom path you have chosen…

Jurgen
March 21, 2012 6:35 pm

Willis Eschenbach says:
March 21, 2012 at 10:19 am
I fear I find this totally unconvincing…
– – – – – – –
His critique is reminiscent of the critique on numerology. No one is saying Dr. Scafetta is up to this, but then you have to realize if you start looking for numerical coincidences or patterns in phenomena, objects, pieces of literature, images, whatever, you are going to find them. Wherever you want to find them.
It may be a trap, if you don’t realize this creative aspect of the human mind. Many patterns we perceive are but artefacts of the human mind. So there are methods developed to distinguish these from the real patterns out there. I think that’s what science is about.
Dr. Scafetta uses an “phenomenological” approach in his analysis of data I did learn from earlier comments on WUWT. I am curious about this. As I understand the phenomenological approach is a paradigm in the social sciences where you deal with phenomena too complex and unique in terms of a pure “physical approach”, as that would become pretty meaningless, say to understand the mechanisms of a political movement of psychological processes. So it is the object here that defines the paradigm: social and psychological phenomena, and the meaningfulness (to individuals) of these phenomena. I cannot see such objects in climate science, but then, I don’t know how Dr. Scafetta uses this approach.

Editor
March 21, 2012 6:39 pm

populartechnology says:
March 21, 2012 at 6:09 pm

Willis, the word censored did not appear in that quote and you have instead chosen to butcher the context of my statement for your strawman argument. Your reading comprehension problems are not my concern. I was referring to the main article not the comments. I am not surprised you would jump insane conclusions by carelessly reading what people write. This sort of behavior is getting fairly embarrassing for you.

If your meaning was restricted to just the main article and not the comments, then I did misunderstand you, poptech, and you have my apologies.
I still say that it is perfectly valid for Dr. Svalgard’s comments to be in the main article. Why should they not be there? I have said many times that if you have a new scientific theory, the best person to hand it to for evaluation is your worst enemy. If they can’t find holes in it, that’s a good sign.
You, on the other hand, want to keep Leif’s comments out of the main article. You may not understand that Leif’s comments provide information about the other side of the story, and Anthony does not want to be seen as either a supporter or an opponent of Dr. Scafetta’s theories. Anthony wants it to be a balanced presentation of both sides of the issue.
I’m sorry if you object to a balanced presentation, but if Dr. Scafetta’s theories can’t survive that, then he should publish elsewhere.
w.
PS—As to what embarrasses me, you don’t have a clue and you’re wasting your time guessing. Mostly I’m embarrassed by pseudo-scientific trash like Dr. Scafetta’s claims getting any space at all on WUWT, but hey, that’s just me.

March 21, 2012 6:43 pm

Ninderthana says:
March 21, 2012 at 6:22 pm
How about David Hathaway and the 11 year Solar meridional flow?
The meridional flow is not ‘natural resonance’ anymore than the Hadley cell in the Earth’s atmosphere is.
About two-thirds of all variable stars appear to be pulsating.
Pulsating variable stars are confined to certain regions of the H-R diagram and are not solar-type stars at all.
I could go on and on….
Dishing up more irrelevant stuff? Your examples show that you have no idea about what goes on in stars. Perhaps stop embarrassing yourself further…

Editor
March 21, 2012 6:43 pm

Ninderthana says:
March 21, 2012 at 6:22 pm (Edit)

Leif said,

Many physical systems have natural resonances e.g. the convective layers of solar-type stars.

Those seem to have a period around 5 minutes, perhaps you could produce links to papers demonstrating convective resonances in sun-like stars of the order of decades or centuries. You are welcome to educate us here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How about David Hathaway and the 11 year Solar meridional flow?: …

Ninderthana, I don’t understand what a slow variation in a flow system has to do with natural resonances.
For example, the rivers where I live have a slow natural variation in their flow, with an annual cycle. But describing that variation in flow as a “resonance” is totally incorrect.
The same seems to be true with the slow changes in the suns meridional flow. There is certainly a slow change, but I see nothing to indicate it is a resonance.
Perhaps you could clarify for us what you are calling a “resonance”
w.

Robert Leyland
March 21, 2012 6:45 pm

Leif:
>Many physical systems have natural resonances e.g. the convective layers of solar-type stars.
Those seem to have a period around 5 minutes, perhaps you could produce links to papers demonstrating convective resonances in sun-like stars of the order of decades or centuries. You are welcome to educate us here.
Well lets see, the Earth-Moon system has one resonance period that is close to the 24 hours, and another close to 28 days, and yet another close to 38 years. Are those long enough?

Jurgen
March 21, 2012 6:47 pm

typo:
…political movement or psychological processes… (last alinea)

Editor
March 21, 2012 6:49 pm

u.k.(us) says:
March 21, 2012 at 6:22 pm

Willis Eschenbach says:
March 21, 2012 at 5:06 pm
==================
Ok,
Willis, you have taken over another thread, as if it was your own.
FYI, without WUWT, you, along with the rest of us would be lost in the wilderness.
Let’s not mess that up.

You’ll have to define for me what “taken over” means on your planet. You can post comments on this thread. I can post comments. You post them. I post them.
So how is it that I’ve “taken over” in your mind? I mean other than by the strength of my arguments? What is it I’ve done that you object to, that you could not do yourself? I’m not stopping you or anyone else from posting, what do you mean I’ve “taken over” the thread?
w.

populartechnology
March 21, 2012 6:53 pm

You, on the other hand, want to keep Leif’s comments out of the main article. You may not understand that Leif’s comments provide information about the other side of the story, and Anthony does not want to be seen as either a supporter or an opponent of Dr. Scafetta’s theories. Anthony wants it to be a balanced presentation of both sides of the issue.

Leif is more than capable of typing them in the comment section. By including Leif’s comments and Anthony’s own criticism in the main presentation he is seen as an opponent and it is not a balanced presentation. The reader is immediately biased against the paper.
I would expect that if Leif had a new paper it would not include critical commentary from Dr. Scafetta in the main presentation here.

My blog, my decision, butt out and take it elsewhere – Anthony

u.k.(us)
March 21, 2012 6:54 pm

Willis Eschenbach says:
March 21, 2012 at 6:39 pm
=======================
You drug Anthony’s name into this.
[snip] nobody has any [snip] scruples anymore.

Pamela Gray
March 21, 2012 7:02 pm

I would be getting up on my soap box (if for no other reason than that people could see me) to continue the drum beat of my pet theory (aka, sacrifices at 8:00 sharp), ‘cept that Leif and Willis would knock the box out from under me. What’s really crazy about that is they would be saying the exact same thing about my caveworman theory. That says a whole lot more about this pet temperature/solar/barycenter connection theory than it does about Leif and Willis.

Daryl M
March 21, 2012 7:06 pm

A few years ago, Ian Wilson published a paper about spin-orbit coupling. It was discussed here (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/28/astronomical-society-of-australia-publishes-new-paper-warning-of-solar-quieting-and-global-cooling/). I thought then and still think that his ideas are interesting. Rather than getting hung up on tidal effects, the paper focusses on changes in angular momentum of the planets. Considering the surface of earth is 70% water, if something causes the period of rotation to change, it will have an effect on the flow of ocean currents. I think the idea is brilliant and that merits a closer investigation.

March 21, 2012 7:18 pm

populartechnology says:
March 21, 2012 at 6:53 pm
Leif is more than capable of typing them in the comment section. By including Leif’s comments and Anthony’s own criticism in the main presentation he is seen as an opponent and it is not a balanced presentation. The reader is immediately biased against the paper.
So you are taking Anthony to task over him presenting an opposing view to get a balanced presentation…
If you don’t like Anthony’s approach, don’t visit his home here.

March 21, 2012 7:26 pm

Robert Leyland says:
March 21, 2012 at 6:45 pm
Well lets see, the Earth-Moon system has one resonance period that is close to the 24 hours, and another close to 28 days, and yet another close to 38 years. Are those long enough?
What has the Moon to do with the natural frequencies of the Sun? And I thought that the lunat libration modes have periods of 2.9, 75, and 81 years, but let that slide for now…

u.k.(us)
March 21, 2012 7:30 pm

Willis Eschenbach says:
March 21, 2012 at 6:49 pm
===================
Willis,
No I didn’t forget.

March 21, 2012 8:17 pm

Willis Eschenbach and Leif Svalgaard appear to be like the cat and the fox in the Pinocchio’s Adventures. They both try to mislead (first themselves and then others).
The paper is quite clear and theoretically simple. The sunspot cycle is not constant but varies. A power spectrum analysis of the record reveals that the Schwabe cycle is made of three cycles, two of which are very close to two major tidal frequencies produced by the Jupiter/Saturn spring tide (9.93 year) and Jupiter Sidereal tide (11.86 year). The third frequency is almost but not exactly in the middle frequency at 10.87-year.
At this point I interpret the two side frequencies as truly due to the two tidal frequencies and I associate to them the phases of the two tidal frequencies. The third phase is calibrated on the sunspot number sequence because it represents the solar dynamo cycle.
At this point I sum the three harmonics, and the magic occurs. The periods of destructive interference coincide with the grand solar minima. in addition to the Schwabe cycle, cycles with about 61, 115, 130 and 983 years observed in the solar and climate data during the Holocene are easily recovered.
Willis Eschenbach and Leif Svalgaard, do not see it, nor they understand the meaning of what they see, and get lost in their vane thoughts by convincing themselves that they know everything. What arrogance!
Leif, get it. Your prejudices are not shared by everybody. To oppose a scientific theory it is not enough to say: I do not believe in it. You must propose an alternative theory that agrees better with the data. Do you have it or not?
If not, stop with your arrogance. You are getting boring.

DirkH
March 21, 2012 8:20 pm

Jurgen says:
March 21, 2012 at 6:35 pm
“but then you have to realize if you start looking for numerical coincidences or patterns in phenomena, objects, pieces of literature, images, whatever, you are going to find them. Wherever you want to find them.
It may be a trap, if you don’t realize this creative aspect of the human mind. Many patterns we perceive are but artefacts of the human mind. So there are methods developed to distinguish these from the real patterns out there. ”
Jurgen, an algorithm would also find the patterns. It’s not a trick of the mind. The patterns do objectively exist to quantifiable amounts in the past data, it’s only that you can’t say whether the patterns will also exist in the future, in other words, whether your model has predictive skill.

March 21, 2012 8:26 pm

This is interesting my last two comments never showed up for moderation.

yes, see my addition to your comment above – take it elsewhere for awhile – Anthony

March 21, 2012 8:29 pm

Willis Eschenbach and Leif Svalgaard are talking about everything but the content of my paper.
Leif started to talk of other planets in other far stars! What kind of argument is that, Leif!
We do not have good data nor long enough data to simplistically dismiss what we can deduce for the sun. About the sun, we have long and sufficiently accurate records.
Willis and Leif, tell me what is your theory that explain the observed climatic and solar cycles? What is producing the Maunder minimum, the Dalton Minimum, the 60-year, the 115-year the 1000-year cycles, etc? Please, respond.

Editor
March 21, 2012 8:32 pm

u.k.(us) says:
March 21, 2012 at 7:30 pm

Willis Eschenbach says:
March 21, 2012 at 6:49 pm
===================
Willis,
No I didn’t forget.

u.k., I couldn’t figure out what this was in reference to. Turns out you were talking about this:

Willis, you have taken over another thread, as if it was your own. …

You’ll have to define for me what “taken over” means on your planet. You can post comments on this thread. I can post comments. You post them. I post them.
So how is it that I’ve “taken over” in your mind? I mean other than by the strength of my arguments? What is it I’ve done that you object to, that you could not do yourself? I’m not stopping you or anyone else from posting, what do you mean I’ve “taken over” the thread?

From your latest post I see that you really hate my comments, but I’m still in mystery about how I’ve “taken over” a thread.
Finally, I speak my mind. If you are looking for someone to go all California on Scafetta and rub his tummy and blow in his ear and worry about hurting his poor feelings when they talk to him, I’m not your man. Like Popeye used to say, “I yam what I yam.” I figure people can handle the unvarnished truth, and that if they can’t stand the heat they should get out of the scientific kitchen.
Yes, sometimes I’m more outraged than I should be about scientific malfeasance and the state of climate science … but then as far as I’m concerned, most of the time I’m far too many people are nowhere near outraged enough about scientific malfeasance and the state of climate science.
And yes, when someone jumps into a thread and starts out by insulting me and attacking me, I bite back. You can go all pacifist at that point if you want, it’s every man’s choice how to react to that kind of nonsense, but I won’t stand for it.
All the best,
w.

March 21, 2012 8:33 pm

Is anyone other than myself interested in the fact that Dr. Scafetta’s conjecture references no statistical population thus lying outside science? isn’t this supposed to be a science blog?

Ken S
March 21, 2012 8:41 pm

Within the mist of what seems to be several on going pissing contests may
Is there any effect on any of the mentioned forces as a result of our solar system’s
tilt as it orbits in free fall around the Milky Way Galaxy?

March 21, 2012 8:42 pm

several mentions of the force of lunar tidal effects on the earth being 2.1 compared to the sun 1.0 amount of effect and a couple more stressing the more horizontal movement vectors of fluid unbounded atmospheres. Compared to the parallel bands of global circulating winds for both Jupiter and Saturn, where all of the moons and residual ring system is centered on the equator, the Earths moon swings wildly North and South on the ecliptic plane and more so in reference to the equator. One would think that there would be very strong lunar declinational tidal effects on the Earths atmosphere, observations referenced to the declinational cycle period should make it obvious?

Higher definition global circulation video showing the lunar declinational tides in the atmosphere, three cycles from 10 degrees North of the equator to max North,then back through the cycles to the same point again. Christmas of 2009 through March 8th 2010.

March 22, 2012 12:21 pm

About the three Schwabe peaks in the power spectrum analysis
The three peaks derive from two alternative direct measures of the power spectrum analysis of the sunspot number record, see figure 3.
Similar peaks were found also by other people, for example.
Kane, R.P.,1999. Prediction of the sun spot maximum of solar cycle 23 by extrapolation of spectral components. Solar Physics 189, 217–224.
see figure 1A in the attached paper where the sunspot record is found to have three peaks at about 10, 11 and 11.6 years, as I say in the paper
I get slightly different results because I use 13 years more data than Kane. One needs to use long records to see well these peaks, because longer the record better is the analysis (if the record is sufficiently accurate). Moreover, it is evident that the sunspot cycle is not constant, so it cannot be described by just one frequency.
What I do next, considering that power spectrum analysis is not an infinitely accurate methodology (as Willies erroneously believes) and it is easy to get some peak shift, I interpret my results (9.99, 10.9 and 11.86) as due to the two J/S tidal frequencies (9.93 and 11.86) which would imply that the middle solar dynamo cycle is 10.87 year for keeping the same three frequency resonance, as explained in the paper. All these corrections are within one month error (+/- 0.08 year), which is the precision of the sunspot number record, which is a monthly record as clearly explained in the paper. So, the corrections are legitimate.
At this point I add the astronomical phases of the planetary tides (this is a very important point to determine the physical nature of the cycles), and use the middle frequency phase as deduced from the sunspot number which is since 1749, well after the Maunder minimum.
Finally, I test the hindcasting capability of the model against much longer solar and climate records covering thousands of years. And the model started to produce complex beats that match almost exactly all grand solar minima (Dalton, Maunder etc), the quasi 1000 year cycle during the Holocene (12,000 years), the 1000-year cycle in the temperature records, seventeen 115 year cycle in the temperature proxies since 1AD, the quasi 60 year modulation of the temperature since 1850 and its upward trend since Dalton minimum. All phases of the beat cycles are directly deduced from the main three Schwabe cycle, so they are not fitting parameters.
Moreover, the model forecast the approaching grand solar minimum that is predicted by a lot of solar scientists (actually I was one of the first, but Leif blocked my publication last year). And my model explains that is will be deep because produced by the combined minima of the 60 and 115 year cycle. Etc…
All these things are clearly written inthe paper. So please read it before criticizing.

March 22, 2012 12:30 pm

About the initial comment from Antony above,I believe that there are he might have misunderstood some part of the paper.
1)
I am not arguing from the barycentric point of view, which is false. In the paper I am talking
about tidal dynamics, a quite different approach. My argument
is based on the finding of my figure 2 and 3 that reveal the sunspot record
as made of three cycles (two tidal frequencies, on the side, plus a central
dynamo cycle). Then the model was developed and its hindcast
tests were discissed in the paper, etc.
2)
There are numerous misconceptions since the beginning such as “Figure 9 looks to be interesting, but note that it is in generic units, not temperature, so has no predictive value by itself.”
It is a hindcast and prediction. There is no need to use specific units, but only dynamics. The units are interpreted correctly in the text of the paper as being approximately W/m^2 and as I say in the caption of the figure “However, the bottom curve approximately reproduces the patterns observed in the proxy solar models depicted in Fig. 5. The latter record may be considered as a realistic, although schematic, representation of solar dynamics.”
3) About Leif’s comments. It is important to realize that Solar physics is not “settled” physics. People do not even understand why the sun has a 11-year cycle (which is between the 10 and 12 year J/S tidal frequencies, as explained in my paper).
4)
The only argument advanced by Leif against my paper is that the phenomenon is his opinion was not observed in other stars. This is hardly surprising. We do not have accurate nor long records about other stars!
Moreover we need to observe the right thing, for example, even if you have a large planet very close to a star, the observable effect is associated to many things: how eccentric the orbits are and how big the star is, and its composition etc. Stars have a huge inertia to tidal effects and even if you have a planet large and close enough to the star to produce a theoretical 4,000,000 larger tidal effect, it does not means that the response from the star must be linear! Even simple elastic systems may be quite sensitive to small perturbations but become extremely rigid to large and rapid perturbations, etc.
It is evident that any study on planetary influence on a star needs to start from the sun, and then eventually extended to other star systems, but probably we need to wait several decades before
having sufficiently long records about other stars!
In the case of the sun I needed at least a 200 year long sunspot record to
detect the three Schwabe cycles, and at least 1000 years of data for
hindcast tests to check the other frequencies. People can do the math for how long we need to wait for the other stars before having long enogh records.
Moreover, I believe that many readers have a typical misconception of physics.
In science a model has a physical basis when it is based on the observations
and the data and it is able to reconstruct, hindcast and/or forecast them.
It is evident to everybody reading my paper with an open mind that under the scientific
method, the model I proposed is “physically based” because I am
describing and reconstructing the dynamical properties of the data and I
showed that the model is able to hindcast millennia long data records.
Nobody even came close to these achievements.
To say otherwise would mean to reject everything in science and physics
because all findings and laws of physics are based on the observations and
the data and are tested on their capability of reconstruct, hindcast and/or
forecast observations, as I did in the paper
Of course, pointing out that I was not solving the problem using for example
plasma physics or quantum mechanics or whatever else. But this is a complex
exercise that needs its own time. As I correctly say in the paper.
“Further research should address the physical mechanisms necessary to
integrate planetary tides and solar dynamo physics for a more physically
based model.”

March 22, 2012 12:33 pm

Nicola Scafetta (March 21, 2012 at 8:17 pm):
In the second to last paragraph, you imply that your model that has the status of a scientific theory. I disagree.
The term “conjecture” references a model that is insusceptible to statistical validation. The term references a model that is susceptible to statistical validation but that has not been statistically validated while the term “scientific theory” references a model that has been statistically validated. As your model is neither statistically validated nor susceptible to statistical validation, the appropriate descriptor for it is “conjecture.”
In its assessment reports, the IPCC obfuscates issues such as this one by attaching confusing semantics to the word “evaluation.” In an IPCC-style “evaluation” one or more model projections to the global average surface air temperature are compared to a global average surface air temperature time series. As the word “evaluation” sounds like the word “validation” one might draw the conclusion that a model has been validated when it has been evaluated but this is far from the case.

Martin Lewitt
March 22, 2012 12:35 pm

Dr. Svalgaard,
“And it so happens that the natural resonances of the sun are just those that match Nicola’s several planetary cycles, right?”
It would only have to be close for resonance effects or synchronization between two oscillators. Much weaker forces synchronized the orbits of pluto and neptune.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronization_of_chaos

March 22, 2012 12:35 pm

Nicola Scafetta says:
March 21, 2012 at 8:29 pm
Willis Eschenbach and Leif Svalgaard are talking about everything but the content of my paper.
There is nothing new in your paper that has not already been covered extensively here.
Leif started to talk of other planets in other far stars! What kind of argument is that, Leif!
We do not have good data nor long enough data to simplistically dismiss what we can deduce for the sun.

As it is hard to cover the full breadth of a field, you may be excuded for been ignorant of stellar activity. The question of Star-Planet-Interaction is an active area of research. We have studied many dozens of systems for which such interaction might be suspected [and the number is growing as we speak].
E.g.: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1106.0189v1.pdf
“there is no significant correlation in the relation between the X-ray activity indicator LX/Lbol vs. planetary mass (see Fig. 3, right panel); testing for rank correlation yields r = 0.003, i.e. practically
no correlation at all. This is also true for stars with far-out planets, for which no SPI-related effects are expected (Fig. 4).”

March 22, 2012 12:43 pm

Nicola Scafetta says:
March 22, 2012 at 12:21 pm
Moreover, the model forecast the approaching grand solar minimum that is predicted by a lot of solar scientists (actually I was one of the first, but Leif blocked my publication last year).
The coming minimum was, as you say, predicted by many [Schatten, 2003; Svalgaard, 2005; etc] based on sound physics, you were not ‘one of the first’. Your papers were rejected by several referees. Post the objections by the reviewers here so everybody can see why your papers were rejected.

March 22, 2012 12:45 pm

Nicola Scafetta says:
March 22, 2012 at 12:21 pm
About the three Schwabe peaks in the power spectrum analysis The three peaks derive from two alternative direct measures of the power spectrum analysis of the sunspot number record, see figure 3.
Dr. Scafetta
You don’t need any of that , here is a simple way, and even more acurate:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC5.htm
same as in here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm
All done about 9 years ago.

March 22, 2012 12:47 pm

Martin Lewitt says:
March 22, 2012 at 12:35 pm
It would only have to be close for resonance effects or synchronization between two oscillators.
the natural frequencies for solar oscillations are of the order of a few minutes. And you do not seem to know what a resonance is. Let me refresh your mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonance “Resonance occurs when a system is able to store and easily transfer energy between two or more different storage modes”. So what storage modes do you have in mind?

March 22, 2012 12:50 pm

Leif,
“We have studied many dozens of systems for which such interaction might be suspected”
We need to start with the Sun, because we need very long record, we will see what we have in the next 50-years.
“there is no significant correlation in the relation between the X-ray activity indicator LX/Lbol vs. planetary mass (see Fig. 3, right panel); testing for rank correlation yields r = 0.003, i.e. practically
no correlation at all. This is also true for stars with far-out planets, for which no SPI-related effects are expected ”
On the contrary the rank correlations that I found using the data in my paper are extremely high more than 99.9%. You are just looking at the wrong observable.
Does not make any sense to state that my work is wrong just because everybody else has failed!
You need to see what I did, not what others have done.

Z
March 22, 2012 12:52 pm

Leif Svalgaard says:
March 21, 2012 at 6:14 pm
This is complete nonsense. At every point from the center to the surface the inward pressure [gravity] balances exactly the outward pressure [of a hot gas]. This is called hydrostatic equilibrium: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrostatic_equilibrium
So there are no convection currents, no CME’s, no turbulence, no “magnetic ropes”, no flows – the sun is in exactly balanced hydrostatic equilibrium.
I see.

March 22, 2012 12:54 pm

Leif Svalgaard says: March 21, 2012 at 7:18 pm
So you are taking Anthony to task over him presenting an opposing view to get a balanced presentation?

A balanced presentation would have included both a positive and critical review or it would have included a response from Dr. Scafetta to your and Anthony’s criticism. There is nothing balanced about the current presentation as it is biased against Dr. Scafetta’s paper as he was not given the opportunity to defend himself in the main article. This is why I recommended leaving the criticisms to the comments.

March 22, 2012 12:57 pm

I hope I added two numbers correctly this time, if so the polar magnetic field appears to be on the move.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC6.htm
Ideal ‘zero crossing’ would have happened about now, but it appears it’s few months late. SC24max in a year or so ?

March 22, 2012 1:12 pm

Poptech says: March 22, 2012 at 12:54 pm
“There is nothing balanced about the current presentation as it is biased against Dr. Scafetta’s paper as he was not given the opportunity to defend himself in the main article.”
I agree.
At least my comment in
Nicola Scafetta says: March 22, 2012 at 12:30 pm
needs to be added to the main article.

Sarge
March 22, 2012 1:14 pm

Terry Oldberg wrote:
The term “conjecture” references a model that is insusceptible to statistical validation. The term references a model that is susceptible to statistical validation but that has not been statistically validated while the term “scientific theory” references a model that has been statistically validated.
Could you please provide me with the source of these definitions? I am most interested in knowing their origins, as I am unable to find any reference work that insists on the usages you are putting forward as mandatory to either physics in particular or science in general.
I’m familiar with both Popper’s and Hawking’s oft-quoted definitions of ‘theory,’ and neither of them seem to demand ‘statistical validation’ for the term to be applicable.
Since general usage of the two words considers a theory to be by-definition conjectural, which would make your criticism a distinction without a difference. I’m assuming that you are citing some form of canonical definition that you can reference.
General definitions simply hold a ‘theory,’ scientific or otherwise, to be an explanation of a system or observed phenomena that has been proposed but not yet proved or disproved.
Can you enlighten me with a citation for your much more specific definitions, please?

March 22, 2012 1:25 pm

Nicola Scafetta says:
March 22, 2012 at 12:50 pm
We need to start with the Sun, because we need very long record, we will see what we have in the next 50-years.
Not at all. We have a great laboratory called the Universe. It presents us with many examples that show us the effects with which to compare our theories
You are just looking at the wrong observable.
see above
You need to see what I did, not what others have done.
I and several reviewers have seen what you did and found it wanting. Post the reviews here, so everybody can see what you did wrong.
Z says:
March 22, 2012 at 12:52 pm
So there are no convection currents, no CME’s, no turbulence, no “magnetic ropes”, no flows – the sun is in exactly balanced hydrostatic equilibrium.
I see.

You do not see anything. My point was that there is not some point inside the sun where the forces are balanced, but that they are VERY nearly [to high degree of approximation] balanced throughout the sun and any other star.
Poptech says:
March 22, 2012 at 12:54 pm
he was not given the opportunity to defend himself in the main article. This is why I recommended leaving the criticisms to the comments.
He was given the opportunity to present the paper in the first place. If Anthony has reservations, that is his prerogative. You don’t like that, go elsewhere
vukcevic says:
March 22, 2012 at 12:45 pm
All done about 9 years ago.
that particular numerology [and the numbers 9.93 and 11.86] is 112 years old: http://www.leif.org/EOS/1900MNRAS-Brown-Sunspot-Tides.pdf including the 61-yr period and its [failed] prediction of a solar maximum in 1908 [although Scafetta believes that there was a auroral and solar large maximum at that time]

March 22, 2012 1:46 pm

Nicola Scafetta says:
March 22, 2012 at 1:12 pm
At least my comment in […]
needs to be added to the main article.

As well as the reports from all the expert reviewers.

March 22, 2012 1:48 pm

Great paper Nicola – I’m convinced your empirical approach to climate is the only useful one and contrasts with the IPCC assumption based modelling approach. Don’t worry about Leif too much his position reveals a failure of imagination. But don’t discount what he says entirely . I always found in business it was very useful to have an “abominable no man” around to keep everyone honest.Empirically based paradigms have often been said to be impossible because the orthodox couldn’t conceive of a mechanism . In my own field – as an undergraduate in geology at Oxford continental drift – as it then was – was regarded as science fiction by the faculty because the lighter continents couldn’t possibly drift through the heavier mantle. I believe Kelvin calculated that because of the measured heat flow the earth couldn’t be more than about 45 million years old while geologists were looking for hundreds of millions or more.. Then radioactivity was discovered. Empirical correlations point the way to new fundamental discovery. The correlation comes first and the mechanisms will follow

F. Ross
March 22, 2012 1:59 pm

Nicola Scafetta says:
March 21, 2012 at 8:17 pm
“…
At this point I sum the three harmonics, and the magic occurs.
…”

[+ emphasis]
May I suggest that the choice to use the word magic was a bad one.
I predict that you may take some flak for that.

March 22, 2012 2:09 pm

O, for goodness’ sake, Poptech, when will you drop this refrain? Your kvetching about “balanced presentations” and showing bias is wearing thin.
Anthony introduced Dr Scafetta’s paper by declaring his reservations, and he ends his prelude with a declaration of his skepticism. This is his right and even his responsibility. Whether you and others agree or disagree, this whole topic that appears to me like a mad mazurka on the fuzzy borders between science and pseudoscience.It’s Anthony’s perogative, then, to clarify his views. exercise his bias and to even distance himself lest he and WUWT be misunderstood. The accusation of being sympathetic to pseudoscientific claims is toxic one to the skeptics who, because of politics and funding, have to work ten times as hard to establish their credibility. Leif and of course, Willis (being Willis), do the same with less subtlety and politeness, and while you may not like this and even I might raise an eyebrow, it’s one way of doing informal and vigorous peer review. Think of it as an invention of the blogosphere and an improvement on the vague, two-faced blather and pretence of objectivity one often encounters in professional journals.

March 22, 2012 2:12 pm

Leif Svalgaard says:
March 22, 2012 at 1:25 pm
……..
Hi doc, here we meet again ..
Thanks for the link, that is an excellent article, that any aspiring planetologist (astrologer is a wrong term, astrology = science of stars), should study in detail before embarking on calculating planetary gravitations, tides, etc. In my defence, I did do a rough calculation long ago and realised that a few cm tide of the subsurface flow’s fluid, in the convection zone, are next to irrelevant.
Hence, as you may recall I proposed ‘the electro-magnetic feedback hypothesis’; here is short reminder we considered some 2-3 years ago:
‘Magnetic ropes or clouds’ that emanate out of the sun, are linked to it by combination of electric current and magnetic field
http://ase.tufts.edu/cosmos/pictures/Sept09/Fig8_7.MagCloud.gif
moving through heliosphere as shown by this NASA animation

If the ‘magnetic rope’ doesn’t hit a magnetosphere it progresses to the far reaches of the heliosphere and disperses along the heliopause. But if it does hit a magnetosphere, a reconnection ensues, part of it is short-circuited, than ‘bang’! the energy is discharged.
http://www.igpp.ucla.edu/public/THEMIS/SCI/Pubs/Nuggets/reconnection/262351main_reconnect.mpg
Nothing controversial to this point I hope.
The hypothesis:
since the ‘magnetic rope’ is connected to the source, i.e. the sun, the short circuit effect is transmitted back to the solar surface.
Svalgaard and Hathaway said to me: this can’t happen since the solar wind doesn’t allow anything electro or magnetic to move upstream i.e. against the solar wind, to connect back to the sun.
My reply: solar wind gets swept out of the way by the CME ( e.g. , day the solar wind died, Forbush etc), as clearly shown here:
http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov:8080/IswaSystemWebApp/iSWACygnetStreamer?timestamp=2038-01-23+00%3A44%3A00&window=-1&cygnetId=261
Thus the role of gravitation force is limited, and only important as far as it moves J & S with their huge magnetospheres along the orbits. Many details are left to be worked out, but that could be a task for next generation of enthusiasts, to whom I sincerely recommend article
http://www.leif.org/EOS/1900MNRAS-Brown-Sunspot-Tides.pdf

March 22, 2012 2:30 pm

Sarge (March 22, 2012 at 1:14 pm):
Thanks for taking the time to reply. Wikipedia’s article { http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjecture } on the topic of “conjecture” defines two of the three terms. To quote from the article:
A conjecture is a proposition that is unproven but is thought to be true and has not been
disproven. Karl Popper pioneered the use of the term “conjecture” in scientific philosophy.
Conjecture is contrasted by hypothesis (hence theory, axiom, principle), which is a testable
statement based on accepted grounds.
I’ve used the term “validation” as it is used in Wikipedia’s article { http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-validation_(statistics) } on on “Cross-validation (statistics)” To quote from the article:
…cross-validation involves partitioning a sample of data into complementary subsets,
performing the analysis on one subset (called the training set), and validating the analysis on
the other subset (called the validation set or testing set).
I’ve prepended the modifier “statistical” to “validation” to make it clear that the semantics attached to “validation” are those of mathematical statistics and not those of computer engineering.
In the article entitled “Spinning the Climate,” { http://www.klimanotizen.de/2008.07.12_Gray_Spinning_the_Climate.pdf } the long-time IPCC expert reviewer Vincent Gray reports that the IPCC once claimed its climate models to be statistically validated. When Gray pointed out to IPCC management that none of these models had been statistically validated or were susceptible to being statistically validated, the IPCC reacted through a suberfuge in which the word “validated” was changed to “evaluated” in all subsequent IPCC assessment reports. “Evaluated” is a statistically meaningless term but few readers of the IPCC’s assessment reports know that. Thus, the IPCC’s subterfuge has had the effect of suggesting validation in the minds of the IPCC’s numerous dupes without providing the reality of it. In the minds of these dupes, the IPCC’s models appear to be scientific theories when they are at most conjectures.

March 22, 2012 2:36 pm

vukcevic says:
March 22, 2012 at 2:12 pm
Svalgaard and Hathaway said to me: this can’t happen since the solar wind doesn’t allow anything electro or magnetic to move upstream
My reply: solar wind gets swept out of the way by the CME

CMEs are sweeping outwards and the same goes for them.

Joachim Seifert
March 22, 2012 3:11 pm

To all:
My opinion is that everybody who presents a new approach or theory,
which he can substantiate with some reasonable evidence, in particularly
overlooked evidence, should receive a double {[+]}. and should be ENCOURAGED
……whereas….a double {[-]} should go to all Warmists, they had 30 years time
and billions in funds…
Furthermore, a double { {[-]} should go AS WELL to commentators who, until
now, have NOT produced an approach of their own, for not being capable to do
so, and therefore, to feel important, resort to “know-it-all-critizism”, which they
mistakenly consider to be “scientific”….but are only attempts to “derail” the post….
JS

March 22, 2012 3:19 pm

Leif Svalgaard says:
March 22, 2012 at 2:36 pm
…………..
Your observation is correct; there is no external magnetic field within body of the magnetic rope
http://ase.tufts.edu/cosmos/pictures/Sept09/Fig8_7.MagCloud.gif
as outlined with a ‘wriggly’ purple line, to impede bi-directional electro-magnetic communication, (as outlined by the arrow-ed purple line) between front lobe of the rope and its source at the sun’s surface.
Electro-magnetic feedback path along purple line marked with arrows (consult the above link)
– Solar surface
– Front lobe & reconnection
– Back to the solar surface
Here feedback loop flow is in the anticlockwise direction.
Let’s remind everyone of the following:
Sunspots (as the solar activity in general) in the origin and the consequence are essentially of the electro and magnetic nature, where the gravitational effects are negligible.

Vincent
March 22, 2012 3:28 pm

In figure 10 of the Scafetta paper, just after 2020 and around 2035, the SSN drops to zero. This gives the impression that they have gone negative and have been clipped because negative SSNs are not possible.
I encountered the same problem recently and I worked around it by recognizing that the solar cycles reverse sign from one cycle to the next (observable through magnetic fields). Two consecutive cycles are in fact two halves of one full cycle of 22 years.
I have not fully read the Scafetta paper (& most comments above), so perhaps it is explained there, but it seems as though it is a mistake to ignore the sign of the cycles.
Without known data I assumed that they alternate, ad nauseam, but in all likelyhood the beat between frequency components may cause a the cycle to break up and result in consecutive positive cycles.
Is there any better information available than my guess of simple alternation of the cycle sign?
(The method I have been using is the Periodicity Transform of Sethares and Staley, using seat-of-the-pants engineering and my own interpretation of the method. I am merely tinkering for the hell of it and pure curiosity).

March 22, 2012 3:29 pm

Just a note that some of us in the peanut gallery would appreciate, whenever possible and at everyone’s convenience, an “elevator speech” summary of this kerfaffle. If it’s not too much trouble.
Do you give yourself a “a double {[+]}” for your post, Mr Seifert? 🙂
Thanks for the formatting fix-up, moderator; I promise to be more careful.

Joachim Seifert
March 22, 2012 3:42 pm

To Peter:
If not, I would not have said so, see German Amazon.de
with ISBN 978-3-86805-604-4
Thank you for the question…..
JS

March 22, 2012 3:47 pm

vukcevic says:
March 22, 2012 at 3:19 pm
there is no external magnetic field within body of the magnetic rope as outlined with a ‘wriggly’ purple line, to impede bi-directional electro-magnetic communication
The rope is filled with coronal plasma and a magnetic field and is moving out from the sun a supersonic [superalfveninc] speed so no feedback is possible. The counterstreaming electrons are a VERY VERY tiny population of high-energy particles that [like cosmic rays] are not frozen in, but they do not have any effect on the overall propagation. It is like an airplane flying into a hurricane. the plane can go where it wants but the air goes with the hurricane and the wind cannot blow counter to the flow of the storm. You can get off the electro- magneto- chair. There is nothing there.

Myrrh
March 22, 2012 3:58 pm

Ken S says:
March 21, 2012 at 8:41 pm
Within the mist of what seems to be several on going pissing contests may
Is there any effect on any of the mentioned forces as a result of our solar system’s
tilt as it orbits in free fall around the Milky Way Galaxy?
=================
Yes. Our climate changes…
Someone mentioned in one discussion the Kate Humble/Dr Helen Czerski series which has just finished running on the BBC, can’t recall which, he wondered if they’d blow it with some AGW nonsense, I didn’t notice any. Instead, they actually gave really good real world physics explanations of our seasons and weather; terrific explanations of the Indian monsoon and typhoons in the US and the climate/weather at the Antarctic. In all the programmes they were very detailed in describing the tilt, explaining how this affected the Earth using lines in the sand on beaches and stone for the Sun and an apple carried around with its stalk pointing the direction, as well as good computer graphics, because, the whole series was built around the Earth’s tilt..
I was particular interested in what they had to say about the climate change in the Sahara around 5,000 years ago when it dried out, as I’ve wondered before how that had happened. I’d been recording them to watch and so kept the last programme which covered this so I could watch it again – here’s I hope an accurate in the important details, but I got the gist, of what was said:
“Although the gravitational pull of the Moon and Sun have stabilised Earth’s tilt they don’t do it perfectly, today’s angle of tilt 23.4 degrees, but over regular 41,000 year cycles the angle swings between 22 and 24.5 degrees.
“Back when the Sahara was green, [5-10,000 years ago], the Earth’s tilt was close to its maximum angle – together with small cyclical changes in the direction of the tilt and the shape of our orbit was the result that the Sun shone more intensely over the northern hemisphere, powering a monsoon in the Sahara.
“About 5,000 years ago the monsoons failed and the Sahara changed, the vegetation began disappearing, and within a few hundred years it turned from savannah to desert. The people moved north and east to the still fertile river valley, the Nile.
“It’s wonderful to think that because changes in the tilt and orbit are cyclical the Sahara will become green again – but not for another 15,000 years!” (Kate H.)
“In the year long journey around the Sun we’ve travelled 900 million kilometres through space, and in that time we’ve seen how the Earth’s spin dictates the Earth’s climate patterns. How changes in our orbit can transform our planet and how the Earth’s tilt controls the seasons.” (Dr Helen C.)
“Now our voyage is over, but the planet goes on. Each new orbit creating its own unique mix of endlessly varied natural phenomena. It’s quite a ride.” (Kate H.)
“Orbit: Earth’s Extraordinary Journey”: Right now you’re hurtling around the Sun at 100,000 kms an hour. Join Kate Humble and Dr Helen Czerski as they explore the relationship between the Earth’s orbit and the weather
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00xztbr
[Automatic re-direct, it gave the url as /orbit ]

March 22, 2012 4:12 pm

Joachim Seifert says:
March 22, 2012 at 3:42 pm
———————————
“Das Ende der globalen Erwaermung”….aber mein Deutsch ist sehr schlecht, Herr Seifert. Nur zwei Jahren im eine Wiener Hauptschule….1970-1972.

March 22, 2012 4:16 pm

Terry Oldberg said @ March 21, 2012 at 8:33 pm

isn’t this supposed to be a science blog?

It’s also about “commentary on puzzling things in wife”. This makes me hopeful that I might eventually discover here the meaning of wife, and whether there is wife after death. While I strive to give my wife meaning, wife remains an utter mystery to me. It saddens me that to think is to risk one’s wife. Thinking has made my wife a misery.
The strongest force in the universe is the wife force.

March 22, 2012 4:35 pm

Anthony added my comment to the main article. Thank you Anthony.
Because I was criticizing also some of his statements, Anthony also added two short responses. I will respond to them here
Anthony wrote
{from Anthony – Note these references in your paper: Landscheidt, T.,1988.Solar rotation,impulses of the torque in sun’s motion, and
climate change. Climatic Change12,265–295.
Landscheidt, T.,1999.Extrema in sunspot cycle linked toSun’s motion. Solar
Physics 189,415–426.}
Anthony, the fact that I reference some studies that use the barycentric model does not means that I am using it in the paper. My paper is quite clear. I am using tidal considerations. You just need to read the title of the paper and the abstract of my paper to realize it.
Anthony wrote:
{from Anthony – if it isn’t using units of temperature, I fail to see how it can be of predictive value, there is not even any reference to warmer/cooler}
Anthony, it is evident from the paper that my figure 9 refers to solar dynamics, not temperature. The graph has a clear predicting values. About the reference to warmer/cooler, there is no need to add them given the fact that the issue is evident from other figures, for rexample figure 7 that you report above: when the curve goes up it means that solar activity in increasing, and the temperature too will increase, when the curve goes down it means that solar activity is decreasing, which means that the temperature too will decrease.
I do not see why these things are so complicated for you.
I believe that for some reason you are upset. And this negative feeling is making you to miss the importance of a very good paper. Read it again with calm, in one week.

Septic Matthew/Matthew R Marler
March 22, 2012 4:46 pm

Robert Brown: I mostly agree, Willis, although I would be less vehement about the “no scientific value at all” bit. My difficulty (like yours, I think) is that I keep waiting for a hypothesis in there and one never quite appears. Surely at this point we have enough data and computational power to solve the equations of motion for the actual planetary and solar orbits to at least reasonable precision for a rather long time into the past and the future, so this using of this and that and another frequency/period picked out of all of the periods available and ignoring the rest, even though over time they can cumulate to not at all be negligible seems difficult to defend, and it is also unstated why or how the selected periods modulate solar state, let alone how they modulate the Earth’s nominal climate.
I like your idea of solving the equations of motion and using the results.
Dr Scafetta’s modeling is hard to take seriously, but it if the future matches its “predictions” or “projections” closely enough, then some attention will have to be paid to it. However, I do not see how an actual “prediction” has emerged from the modeling. Can a projection of the data onto the resultant curve in figure 7 result in a translation of the “generic units” into, say “degrees C”/”generic unit” to translate the figure into an actual prediction of future temperatures?

Septic Matthew/Matthew R Marler
March 22, 2012 5:00 pm

poptech: There is nothing balanced about the current presentation as it is biased against Dr. Scafetta’s paper as he was not given the opportunity to defend himself in the main article.
We got the link to the original article, and a series of Dr. Scafetta’s responses to the criticisms. I think your claim of lack of balance is insubstantial.

March 22, 2012 5:02 pm

Leif Svalgaard says:
March 22, 2012 at 3:47 pm
…………………
NASA’s fleet of THEMIS spacecraft discovered a flux rope pumping a 650,000 Amp current into the Arctic.
“The satellites have found evidence for magnetic ropes connecting Earth’s upper atmosphere directly to the Sun,” says Dave Sibeck, project scientist for the mission at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Even more impressive was the substorm’s power. Angelopoulos estimates the total energy of the two-hour event at five hundred thousand billion (5 x 1014) Joules. That’s approximately equivalent to the energy of a magnitude 5.5 earthquake.”
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/203795main_FluxPower_400.jpg
It doesn’t appear to be so ‘tiny, tiny’ since it affects movement of the Eart’s outer core 3000km below the surface, where the magnetic field is generated.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Tromso.htm
and that is for interactions with the Earth’s magnetosphere, which is only fraction of the Jupiter’s which extends to ~5AU.
You can get off the electro- magneto- chair. There is nothing there.
From the above quote, one could conclude that here is plenty there, but we have an impasse which may not be resolved, so I close my side of the exchange.

Septic Matthew/Matthew R Marler
March 22, 2012 5:05 pm

Nicola Scafetta: On the contrary the rank correlations that I found using the data in my paper are extremely high more than 99.9%.
I could not find this in the paper. Could you tell us where it is?

Myrrh
March 22, 2012 5:06 pm

KenS – p.s., sorry, got wrapped up in trying to read my handwriting that I forgot to add – if the changes in the tilt of the Earth towards the Sun has such dramatical changes, the tilt of the solar system must perhaps also show some effect in the Sun, though not with the drama which being in orbit around our Sun gives us; the Sun some 99.9% mass of our solar system.
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Sun
“The Sun lies close to the inner rim of the Milky Way Galaxy’s Orion Arm, in the Local Fluff or the Gould Belt [The Gould Belt is a partial ring of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, about 3000 light years across, tilted toward the galactic plane by about 16 to 20 degrees], at a hypothesized distance of 7.5–8.5 kpc (25,000–28,000 lightyears) from the Galactic Centre, contained within the Local Bubble, a space of rarefied hot gas, possibly produced by the supernova remnant, Geminga. The distance between the local arm and the next arm out, the Perseus Arm, is about 6,500 light-years. The Sun, and thus the Solar System, is found in what scientists call the galactic habitable zone.
The Apex of the Sun’s Way, or the solar apex [The solar apex is the direction that the Sun travels with respect to the Local Standard of Rest. In lay terms, it’s the “target” within the Milky Way that the Sun appears to be “chasing” as it orbits the galaxy…], is the direction that the Sun travels through space in the Milky Way, relative to other nearby stars. The general direction of the Sun’s galactic motion is towards the star Vega in the constellation of Lyra at an angle of roughly 60 sky degrees to the direction of the Galactic Center [Galactic Center is the rotational center of the Milky Way galaxy. It is located at a distance of 8.33±0.35 kpc from the Earth in the direction of the constellations Sagittarius, Ophiuchus, and Scorpius where the Milky Way appears brightest…].
The Sun’s orbit around the Galaxy is expected to be roughly elliptical with the addition of perturbations due to the galactic spiral arms and non-uniform mass distributions. In addition the Sun oscillates up and down relative to the galactic plane approximately 2.7 times per orbit. It has been argued that the Sun’s passage through the higher density spiral arms often coincides with mass extinctions on Earth, perhaps due to increased impact events. It takes the Solar System about 225–250 million years to complete one orbit of the galaxy (a galactic year) [The galactic year, also known as a cosmic year, is the duration of time required for the Solar System to orbit once around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Estimates of the length of one orbit range from 225 to 250 million “terrestrial” years….], so it is thought to have completed 20–25 orbits during the lifetime of the Sun. The orbital speed of the Solar System about the center of the Galaxy is approximately 251 km/s. At this speed, it takes around 1,190 years for the Solar System to travel a distance of 1 light-year, or 7 days to travel 1 AU [An astronomical unit is a unit of length equal to about or approximately the mean Earth–Sun distance….].
The Sun’s motion about the centre of mass of the Solar System is complicated by perturbations from the planets. Every few hundred years this motion switches between prograde and retrograde.”

Septic Matthew/Matthew R Marler
March 22, 2012 5:23 pm

Nicola Scafetta: The paper is quite clear and theoretically simple.
With that I agree. It is also the latest in a long series of statistical/modeling exercises, so it is not naive and appears ad hoc. It is now one of dozens of models forecasting, projecting or predicting the future.

Septic Matthew/Matthew R Marler
March 22, 2012 5:39 pm

Willis Eschenbach: Me, I pay attention to the details as well as the large picture. When a man trades in the Moon for the spring tides of Jupiter and Saturn, I tend to notice …
Just so. And that contributes to what I called the “ad hoc” appearance of the paper.

March 22, 2012 6:06 pm

Peter Kovachev, I am well aware that it is Anthony’s right to do what he wishes on his site. It is also my right to state my opinion about something, which is all I did. I find it hard to believe that presenting peer-reviewed papers from a credentialed scientist is what Anthony gets all his criticism from. Though I am sure there are a select few who are very vocal about this to him regarding certain authors. When something is presented here I never believe it to be blindly endorsed by Anthony unless he states so.
Anyone who thinks they can be seen as “moderate” or “rational” in this debate by AGW or AGW Alarm proponents without endorsing their positions is naive.
Regardless, it is a positive development that the topic has been updated with a response from Dr. Scafetta so people can at least read his position and make up their own minds.

March 22, 2012 6:07 pm

Septic Matthew, those responses by Dr. Scafetta were added after I suggested this.

Deanster
March 22, 2012 6:25 pm

I think all the “experts” need to take a timeout and consider …. that just because you can’t explain it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exists.
Sven .. what ever his name is … came up with this theory that Galactic Rays influence Clouds. The “experts” said .. no way! Slowly, the experts are being proven wrong. With each confirmation, they challenge it with another “no way”. But what is troubling, is that they hold that their own unproven story is the “truth”.
The AGW crowd said the Sun could have no effect on Climate. All is tied up in TSI. But again, we are finding out that TSI is not the whole story. There is magnetics, solar wind, etc etc etc.
As for Exclamation Marks … how else do you get a person attention .. especially when they’ve already predetermined that they don’t want to hear it? … !!!!!!!!

Septic Matthew/Matthew R Marler
March 22, 2012 6:28 pm

Poptech: Septic Matthew, those responses by Dr. Scafetta were added after I suggested this.
As far as I can tell, the link to the original article and Dr. Scafetta’s first responses occurred before your first comment. Where am I wrong on this?

Martin Lewitt
March 22, 2012 6:53 pm

Dr. Svalgaard,
“So what storage modes do you have in mind?”
The storage would be something in the state of the admittedly poorly understood solar dynamo responsible for the solar cycle. It may be a coincidence that the period of the dynamo is close to the period of Jupiter’s orbit, but such a coincidence might make a coupling of the oscillators, not just possible, but likely.

March 22, 2012 7:09 pm

Septic Matthew, I was referring to the main article only,
Poptech says: March 22, 2012 at 12:54 pm
UPDATE 3/22/2012 – 1:15PM Dr. Scafetta responds in comments

March 22, 2012 7:14 pm

As for Exclamation Marks … how else do you get a person attention .. especially when they’ve already predetermined that they don’t want to hear it? … !!!!!!!!
Deanster, Dr. Scafetta gave a simple explanation for this,
About my usage of exclamation marks, please note that I am not a English speaking person and I am not able to evaluate how a native English speaking person would interpret it.
Anthony told me that I have to avoid using them (I used it twice in the paper). In the future I will follow his precious advice. So, consider it a typo, if you do not like it.
” – Dr. Scafetta

Editor
March 22, 2012 7:24 pm

Nicola Scafetta says:
March 22, 2012 at 12:21

About the three Schwabe peaks in the power spectrum analysis
The three peaks derive from two alternative direct measures of the power spectrum analysis of the sunspot number record, see figure 3.
Similar peaks were found also by other people, for example.
Kane, R.P.,1999. Prediction of the sun spot maximum of solar cycle 23 by extrapolation of spectral components. Solar Physics 189, 217–224.
see figure 1A in the attached paper where the sunspot record is found to have three peaks at about 10, 11 and 11.6 years, as I say in the paper

Nicola, I’m not sure that paper helps your case in the slightest. It’s paywalled and I don’t pay for failed cyclomania, but the abstract says (emphasis mine):

Spectral characteristics were different in the successive 3 intervals of 83 years each. Hence, for predictions, only data for the recent 83 years were considered relevant. From the spectra for 1914–1996, the most significant peaks at 5.3, 8.3, 10.5, 12.2, 47 years were used for reconstruction. The match between observed and reconstructed values was good (correlation +0.90). When extrapolated, the reconstructed values indicate a sunspot number maximum for the present solar cycle 23 as 140±9, to occur in year 2000 and for the next solar cycle 24 as 105±9, to occur in year 2010–2011.

Cycle 23 started in 1996 and seems to have peaked in 2000, with a smoothed sunspot number maximum of 122.

So he got the timing for cycle 23 right, but was about 20% too high on the number.
That’s not too bad, but it gets much, much worse. He predicted that cycle 24 would peak in 2010-2011 … and since solar cycle 24 still has not peaked and we are in 2012, I’d call his method an abject failure.
In addition, I note that he uses cycles of 5.3, 8.3, 10.5, 12.2, and 47 years … and I’m sure his reasons for his choices are as good as yours.
So if his totally failed prediction is the evidence that is supposed to convince us that you are on the right track … well, color me unconvinced.
w.

March 22, 2012 7:39 pm

Willis Eschenbach says: March 22, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Sorry, Willis. I do not know what to say about the fact that you cannot read papers. Avoid comments on what you cannot verified.
You do not need other papers, just read mine.

Editor
March 22, 2012 7:46 pm

Nicola Scafetta says:
March 22, 2012 at 7:39 pm

Willis Eschenbach says: March 22, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Sorry, Willis. I do not know what to say about the fact that you cannot read papers. Avoid comments on what you cannot verified.
You do not need other papers, just read mine.

I’m sorry, Nicola, but that’s totally unresponsive. You have cited a badly failed prediction as support for your claims.
Regarding whether I “need other papers”, you cited the paper, not me. I’m just reading the paper you pointed to.
How about you deal with the issues and stop the ad hominem attacks. How does a failed prediction buttress your case??
w.

March 22, 2012 8:09 pm

Willis Eschenbach:
You’ve erred. That’s not a “prediction” but rather is a “projection.”The two words reference distinct ideas.

Editor
March 22, 2012 8:15 pm

Joachim Seifert says:
March 22, 2012 at 3:11 pm

To all:
My opinion is that everybody who presents a new approach or theory,
which he can substantiate with some reasonable evidence, in particularly
overlooked evidence, should receive a double {[+]}. and should be ENCOURAGED

You are welcome to sit around and pat each other on the back if you wish, but science progresses, not by encouragement and telling people how great their new idea is, but by falsification.
You continue to argue against subjecting Nicola’s claims to the normal scientific process, which is a harsh examination of the claims in the most unflattering possible light. If you don’t like that, then you should get out of science entirely.
w.

March 22, 2012 8:50 pm

Willis Eschenbach:
If I were to restate your position regarding Dr. Scafetta’s paper, I’d say that science progresses by subjecting claims to falsification. You appear not to understand that, by and large, claims made in the climatological literature are not subject to falsification. In particular, claims made by Dr. Scaffetta in his paper are not subject to falsification. Furthermore, time after time, wattsupwiththat publishes papers making claims which, like Dr. Scaffeta’s, are not subject to falsification. These claims are not scientific for the lack of falsifiability. Why, then, does the supposedly scientific blog wattsupwiththat continue to publish these papers? If the management of wattsupwiththat realizes that a mea culpa is in order, now is the time to make it. I can’t fight this battle by myself and win unless I have allies.

Joachim Seifert
March 23, 2012 8:39 am

To: Willis:
Concerning falsification: Its is “one part” of the process ….and the difficult
part starts BEFORE a falsification: To set up a new heuristic system which
explains global warming [necessary in our life times because AGW is
(1) absolutely false + (2) too costly for manking/waste of wealth of nations]
….. Once the heuristic ACHIEVEMENT reaches table, we have to recline and
rejoice……..and then, by and by, we can start with ATTEMPTS of falsification…
……..whereas it is clearly wrong to cry wulf right from the first minute the new
heuristic approach appears on the table….
JS

susan smith
March 22, 2012 8:18 pm

I accidentally run into this thread. Actually I enjoyed the main articles, but I am rather puzzled about these intense exchanges after the main articles. For example, Scafetta’s paper is already published in a journal, whether it was rejected in another journal is immaterial. So, I am not sure why he is spending this time defending against his critics – it is a better use of time for him to do some other work for the next paper. Let the professional community decide whether this paper is correct or not, and that will happen in time. I am also puzzled that one of the reviewers decided to disclose what other reviewers consensus’ and the final decision was. In my view disclosing the content of his own review in public is problematic, but disclosing the others’ opinion is highly irregular. I saw some calling Leif Svalaard as Dr. Svalgaard, although I could not find any information to suggest that is true from the public information posted in Stanford – maybe he is, and it is not include at Stanford. The other tough critic, Willis Eschenbach, I could find nothing much about him other than in blogs, but I thought I saw somewhere that he criticized some climate academic Judith Curry. I get the impression that most of these discussions are by people who have some knowledge on climate issues, but not with any formal background in the subject. Which is fine in a casual discussion, but when they put so much certainty and weight in their opinion, then it becomes a puzzling issue.

March 22, 2012 8:20 pm

There is a lot of uninformed criticism surrounding Nicloa’s latest paper that unfortunately casts a bad light on the knowledge of this forum. This area of science is not well known and those wishing to criticize should at least arm themselves with some of the basic knowledge. In my experience very very few people bother to consider this.
To clear up some misunderstandings.
1. Nicola’s latest paper has nothing to do with barycentric type theory. The concepts involved in this paper deal with tidal forces from Jupiter & Saturn, which is clearly laid out in his paper. Skimming and not bothering to read the detail often leads one up incorrect paths.
2. The rebuttal concerning exoplanets in other systems is a total red herring. In another paper (Perryman M.A.C. & Schulze-Hartung T) dealing with this topic, several star system barycentric paths are produced showing that so far our own Sun’s path is quite unique. Our Sun shows a regular varying grand minimia cycle of around 172 years which coincides with a solar path change brought about by the outer 4 planets, if we were observing our own Sun from many light years away we would need to observe for possibly 200 years before noticing a change of the grand minima proportion. There is also a smaller modulation or Gliessberg cycle across the solar cycles which moves very slowly and also coincides with the movement of the outer planets, to get this modulation or path change it is necessary to have two main outer planets that are balanced by a further 2 large planets. It would be possible to achieve something similar with a different mix of planets but what is required is a main oscillating force (J/S) disrupted by a periodic change (N/U). The planets also need to be in the outer part of a solar system, so our situation is difficult to reproduce and should not be thought to be common amongst other star systems, a small review and link of the referenced paper can be found at my website.
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/?q=node/202
3. Some are confusing Nicola’s latest paper in this thread with his other paper which is the topic of the WUWT Scafetta climate widget. Nicola has two theories in place covered by different papers. One deals with planetary influence on the 60 year Earth climate cycle (climate widget) which has no input towards solar modulation while the other (this thread) deals with solar changes of longer periods. Any reference to lunar cycles are incorporated in Nicola’s climate widget paper and have nothing to do with his latest paper.
4. Willis is still lost on the importance of the 3rd synodic of Jupiter and Saturn which forms the 60 year cycle in Nicola’s climate widget paper, even after I gave several links which would have cleared his confusion. Once again no one is bothering to read the data. The 3rd synodic or 3rd time Jupiter and Saturn meet in conjunction is close to a 360 degree circuit or cycle. When looking at the JPL data it can easily be seen the 3rd synodic makes a difference, there is a repeating pattern in the Jupiter/Sun distance by several hundred thousand kilometers that cycles every 3rd conjunction. This has been pointed out to Willis but he has either not bothered to read the links provided or purposely ignores the data.
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/?q=node/233
This thread is an example (by some) of the fear to venture down a new path that may produce a new area of science. Planetary science has come along way since Landschei.. passed away and in fact has moved on to totally different paths hardly connected to his science. Take the time to review the new data before passing it off as pseudo-science.

March 22, 2012 8:25 pm

Willis Eschenbach says: March 22, 2012 at 7:46 pm
“How about you deal with the issues and stop the ad hominem attacks. How does a failed prediction buttress your case?”
Because I am not referring to their prediction by itself, Willis.
The prediction used in that paper was based on a specific model the authors proposed. That model was quite naive, and immideately failed. But this does not mean that every word written in that paper is authomatically wrong!
Those authors presented a graph with the power spectra of the sunspot record they had, and found that the sunspot cycles is described by three peaks, as I also found. So, that specific point has been veryfied. And it can be easily verified by repeating the analysis.
Even Leif got the three peaks with his poor FFT, see here
http://www.leif.org/research/FFT-Daily-Sunspot-Number.png
But then you need to think about how to interpret the analysis, which is what the authors of that paper (as well as Leif) did not do properly.

March 22, 2012 8:33 pm

Septic Matthew/Matthew R Marler says:
March 22, 2012 at 4:46 pm
Dr Scafetta’s modeling is hard to take seriously, but it if the future matches its “predictions” or “projections” closely enough, then some attention will have to be paid to it.
It didn’t even hindcast the past correctly, having a large maximum in ~1900, while in fact that was the smallest cycle the past 170 years.
vukcevic says:
March 22, 2012 at 5:02 pm
“That’s approximately equivalent to the energy of a magnitude 5.5 earthquake.”
It doesn’t appear to be so ‘tiny, tiny’ since it affects movement of the Eart’s outer core 3000km below the surface, where the magnetic field is generated.

You are hard at learning. The energy and magnetic field is from the plasma and field that are just like the ordinary solar wind, and is is indeed tiny in the scheme of things. The stuff does not affect movements in the core, the current flows in the atmosphere 100 km up. And does not show that the interaction with the Earth influences the sun.
but we have an impasse which may not be resolved
it is due to your refusal [inability?] to learn. And that there is not much to do about.

March 22, 2012 8:38 pm

Nicola Scafetta says:
March 22, 2012 at 8:25 pm
But then you need to think about how to interpret the analysis, which is what the authors of that paper (as well as Leif) did not do properly.
The several reviewers of your rejected papers explain quite plainly what is wrong with both your analysis and your ‘interpretation’, so man up and post the reviews here so people can see what the problems are.

I’ll be happy to post the reviews if Nicola provides them – Anthony

March 22, 2012 8:50 pm

susan smith says: March 22, 2012 at 8:18 pm
I hope that Anthony reads and realizes that there are two guys arguing improperly thinking that they know everything: “but when they put so much certainty and weight in their opinion, then it becomes a puzzling issue. ”
You are also right about other things.
That is the best way to know what I found.
As Geoff says, This is a new path that may produce a new area of science.

March 22, 2012 9:06 pm

Leif Svalgaard says: March 22, 2012 at 8:38 pm
why do you want to hurt yourself so badly?
If you think my paper is wrong, just submit a comment to the journal. And we will discuss there.
In any case, Leif, the first referee did not find any error in my analysis by his own admission, the second referee’s argument at the end was rejected by the editor. You do not know it, don’t you?
So, it was you and only you.

Editor
March 22, 2012 10:12 pm

Terry Oldberg says:
March 22, 2012 at 8:09 pm

Willis Eschenbach:
You’ve erred. That’s not a “prediction” but rather is a “projection.”The two words reference distinct ideas.

Say what? The guy said that cycle 24 would peak in 2010-2011. That is not only a prediction, it is a badly failed prediction.
w.

March 22, 2012 10:44 pm

Willis Eschenbach:
You’ve got the wrong idea about the nature of a prediction. It is an extrapolation to the unobserved but observable outcome of a statistical event. In the case of Dr. Scafetta’s paper, there clearly are no such events for the set of these events, the “statistical population,” is undefined.
A function that maps the time to a variable such as the global average surface temperature is not a “prediction” but rather is a “projection.” While predictions are falsifiable, projections are not, as I’ve tried to call to your attention on a number of past occasions without reply by you. In wattsupwiththat I’ve already provided details on the distinction between a prediction and a projection and why predictions but not projections are falsifiable in the comments sections of numerous articles and will do so again if asked by wattsupwiththat management. Also, a year ago I published a series of three articles on the same theme at Climate, Etc. I’ll supply the URLs if you wish.
Over a period of 13 years, my job was to design and manage a succession of scientific studies for the Electric Power Research Institute. While in this position, I learned that a scientific study centered on the underlying statistical population for a sample drawn from this population provided the sole basis for falsification of the associated models. Thus, for a scientific study to neglect identification of the underlying population was a sure way for this study to fail. As a scientific study it failed because it was not scientific in lieu of means for falsifying the models..
Like Dr. Scafetta’s study, the IPCC’s study of global warming has no underlying statistical population. Thus, this study lacks a scientific methodology. Nonetheless, the IPCC represents this methodology as scientific. Voters, politicians, journalists, taxpayers, bloggers, laymen etc. need to understand this state of affairs for disaster awaits us if they don’t. I can’t enlighten these folks all by myself. How about some help?

March 22, 2012 10:14 pm

A couple of thoughts:
Terry, string theory and M-theory are mathematical descriptions of the universe developed over the last 25 years by theoreticians seeking to reconcile the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics. M-theory describes an infinite number of different universes and one or other of the M-theory universes can adapt to just about anything. Researchers have no way of testing which of the answers that string/M-theory produce is correct. Indeed, it’s possible they all may be correct and we just happen to live in that one particular universe among an infinite number of universes. So far, no one has been able to make a prediction, using string theory, that can be tested to see if it is correct or not. That is, it fails the falsifiabilty criterion big-time.
String and M-theory are physics and the last time I checked, physics was definitely not merely a science, but the scienciest science that could ever possibly be.
Nicola, nearly 2,000 years ago, Aristotle pointed out that the mammalian marine animals such as dolphins and whales were distinctly different to those other denizens of the sea, the cold-blooded fishes. This was considered to be complete and utter balderdash by ever so many scientists during the ensuing centuries despite ever so much evidence to the contrary. It was Jean Baptiste Lamarck who rediscovered that difference in the late 18thC. He also at that time coined the word “biology” to include both botany and zoology. Current scientific opinion is that Lamarck was an utter numpty whose lifework was completely negated by Charles Darwin. So it goes…
This is not a counsel of despair, nor intended to compare your work to either of these giants of science. Your ideas, if they have sufficient merit, will live on. And if they do, your ghost should not be too surprised to find that what was the Scafetta Theory is widely known as the Eschenbach, or Svalgaard Theory and only obscurantist historians will note the truth.
Now it’s time for the Git to return to his everyday wife and prepare the repast for the Gitling’s 26th burpday celebration.

March 22, 2012 10:55 pm

The Pompous Git:
To the extent that physics embraces non-falsifiable theories, physics is no longer a science, by the definition of “science.”

Editor
March 22, 2012 10:16 pm

Nicola Scafetta says:
March 22, 2012 at 8:25 pm

Willis Eschenbach says: March 22, 2012 at 7:46 pm

“How about you deal with the issues and stop the ad hominem attacks. How does a failed prediction buttress your case?”

Because I am not referring to their prediction by itself, Willis.

You are citing that paper as a support for your claims, when it is clear from their failed prediction that their claims simply don’t work.
I wouldn’t refer to their prediction either if I were you, but then, you did refer to it, and recommended it. I’m unclear why you recommended a failed prediction, but it certainly doesn’t buttress your position.
w.

Editor
March 22, 2012 10:21 pm

Terry Oldberg says:
March 22, 2012 at 8:50 pm

… You appear not to understand that, by and large, claims made in the climatological literature are not subject to falsification. In particular, claims made by Dr. Scaffetta in his paper are not subject to falsification.

Thanks, Terry. I understand very well that many claims made in the climate literature are not falsifiable … which means that they are not science. A claim which is incapable of being falsified is not a scientific claim.
So if Dr. Scafetta’s claims are not falsifiable, they also are not valid scientific claims, and you sure don’t have to convince me of that …
w.

Editor
March 22, 2012 10:26 pm

Nicola Scafetta says:
March 22, 2012 at 9:06 pm

Leif Svalgaard says: March 22, 2012 at 8:38 pm
why do you want to hurt yourself so badly?
If you think my paper is wrong, just submit a comment to the journal. And we will discuss there.
In any case, Leif, the first referee did not find any error in my analysis by his own admission, the second referee’s argument at the end was rejected by the editor. You do not know it, don’t you?
So, it was you and only you.

If you want us to believe that, simply put your money where your mouth is and publish the reviews. Because your word simply won’t do. I have no opinion on the matter, never having read the reviews. But if you are right, then publish them and show us, not just claim but show us, that you are right.
Leif is not hurting himself at all. After all, he’s not the one refusing to publish …
w.

Editor
March 22, 2012 11:12 pm

Terry Oldberg says:
March 22, 2012 at 10:44 pm

Willis Eschenbach:
You’ve got the wrong idea about the nature of a prediction. It is an extrapolation to the unobserved but observable outcome of a statistical event. In the case of Dr. Scafetta’s paper, there clearly are no such events for the set of these events, the “statistical population,” is undefined.
A function that maps the time to a variable such as the global average surface temperature is not a “prediction” but rather is a “projection.” While predictions are falsifiable, projections are not, as I’ve tried to call to your attention on a number of past occasions without reply by you. In wattsupwiththat I’ve already provided details on the distinction between a prediction and a projection and why predictions but not projections are falsifiable in the comments sections of numerous articles and will do so again if asked by wattsupwiththat management. Also, a year ago I published a series of three articles on the same theme at Climate, Etc. I’ll supply the URLs if you wish.

Terry, apparently you mis-read what I said. What I was referring to as a prediction was the claim, not in Dr. Scafetta’s paper but in the paper referenced by Dr. Scafetta, that the sunspot cycle 24 would peak in 2010-2011.
Merriam-Webster says:

prediction: A statement about what will happen or might happen in the future
predict: Say or estimate that (a specified thing) will happen in the future or will be a consequence of something.

So when someone says that a specific thing will happen in the future, like say that solar cycle 24 will peak in 2010-2011, Merriam-Webster says that is most definitely a prediction.
You also say that “predictions but not projections are falsifiable”. Since the solar cycle did not peak in 2010-2011, the claim is falsified, and thus according to you must be a prediction.
w.

March 23, 2012 11:42 am

Willis Eschenbach (March 22, 2012 at 10:44 pm):
I stand corrected. By the way, Merriam-Webster’s definition of “prediction” can be misleading for it fails to provide a context for the use of the term. Under the scientific method of inquiry, a “prediction” exists in the context of the complete set of predictions that are made by an inquiry’s model. The relation from this set to the inquiry’s statistical population is one-to-one.

Joachim Seifert
March 23, 2012 12:21 pm

To Terry: You seem to be hung up on this 3 P prediction/projection/prognosis
confusion…..
According to Adam Smith: Terminology must be clearly understood …otherwise
we get into Scholastics, where everyone puts HIS sense into the term….
The only way to avoid confusion is to AVOID both terms and stay with good old
“Forecast.”…. This word was invented for its clearness……
If I say: Folks, listen, in this decade global temps are not going to increase and
I bet 10,000 \$ on it , and the first person who comes by in 2020 showing
temps have increased and have not plateau-ed will receive this sum….
then I am not going to dicker with “THis only is a one of the 3 PPP quoted
above without any significance…. whereas on the AGW side:
The IPCC has lawyers and word inventors at hand working to eliminate all
RESPONSIBILITY when their future scenarios do not come true….
The MetOffice in England gives detailed temp numbers up to 2020….
NOBODY there will be dismissed there, when the numbers will prove wrong…..
JS

Boston Harold
March 22, 2012 11:23 pm

Wow! This is so cool! Two egotistical tin foil hat brainiacs having a juvenile pissing match in public! Sweet! Let me get some popcorn and a light beer and enjoy the social stupidity of the intelligent.. Leif old buddy…you impress me as an inflexible stubborn condescending hard ass know it all with a God Complex. Do your students worship you…or are they always cutting class? Both of you…cease fire…grow up…and go to opposite corners for a time out. Your bizarre exchange is very creepy. Maybe we could discuss abnormal psychology instead of astrophysics. Cabin fever maybe? Get out of the chalet and get some fresh air and sunshine before you go postal. Is this hissy fit you’re subjecting us all to the sausage making of real science in action? Does Nick owe you money?

Martin Lewitt
March 23, 2012 12:22 am

Can we assume that Dr. Svalgaard’s review comments were similar to what was included in the post proper? If so, they were hardly relevant at all. There is no reason to assume that a solar dynamo could be synchronized with an orbital period so short, no matter how massive the planet. Venus’ tidal effects on the Sun are as large as Jupiter’s yet noone is arguing that the solar dynamo is coupled with Venus. Perhaps solar variation is totally chaotic and all perceived order in it is spurious, but declaring the debate closed is no way to establish that. If there are longer term solar cycles, I doubt the solar dynamo can be sustaining them internally and immune to general relativistic gravitational effects relevant to extended bodies.

wayne Job
March 23, 2012 12:45 am

I am a little disappointed by both Willis and Lief in this post, you have both done yourselves a disfavour. When new science is presented only those with a bias attack like bulldogs, being sceptical is fine but an open and inquiring mind is finer.
Nicola has presented some vary serious research with some very strong correllations to real world events and he is not the first. Some thing very basic and beyond our world controls our climatic conditions and their cyclic nature, this man is trying hard to find the reasons and you can him.
I would have thought that both of you understood that our climate is controlled by outside forces, and the study of these is most important as CO2 certainly does not control our climate.
After a hundred years of consensus science in quantum mechanics they still can not tell me what gravity, electricity or magnetism is, not to mention the higgs boson.
Science in the grand scheme of things has failed us for one hundred years practical scientists using engineering have give us wonderful things and they work we just are not sure why they work.
The imaginary friends that scientists invent to try and prove their grand scheme of every thing is starting to wear a bit thin after a hundred years [ imaginary particles and oops the universe does not work any more, invent dark matter and energy, ok now it works oops]
Nicola you are on the right track, the harmonics of the solar system are the key to its understanding, the harmonic equations of nuclear physics on the speed of light and the gravity harmonic will enlighten your path. These were worked out long before I was born and I am old.

Editor
March 23, 2012 1:13 am

wayne Job says:
March 23, 2012 at 12:45 am

I am a little disappointed by both Willis and Lief in this post, you have both done yourselves a disfavour. When new science is presented only those with a bias attack like bulldogs, being sceptical is fine but an open and inquiring mind is finer.

Wayne, if you want to go all California on Scafetta, and tell him what a great man he is so he doesn’t get discouraged, offer him praise so as not to damage his self-esteem, that’s fine … but don’t pretend it is science.
Science proceeds by exposing new claims to the pitiless light of public enquiry and to the most strenuous attempts at falsification. If you want an encounter group, go to Esalen. This is science, and it is a blood sport.
When I put out my new ideas, people gather like sharks to try to find any possible holes in my science … funny, but I don’t recall you saying that they were out of line.
And neither did I say they were out of line, because they weren’t—that’s what I expect. That is science. It’s not about holding hands and singing kumbaya. It’s about one scientist trying his damnedest to poke holes in another scientist’s theory. I hope and expect that people will do that to my ideas and claims, and you can be quite sure I’ll do it to their ideas and claims.
w.

Editor
March 23, 2012 1:17 am

wayne Job says:
March 23, 2012 at 12:45 am

… I would have thought that both of you understood that our climate is controlled by outside forces, and the study of these is most important as CO2 certainly does not control our climate.

I understand no such thing. As far as I am concerned, climate is controlled by the Constructal Law, which lays out the parameters underlying the many thermostatic and homeostatic phenomena operating at a range of temporal and spatial scales.
w.

E.M.Smith
Editor
March 23, 2012 2:16 am

I see the usual “Does So!,” “Does not!” has broken out about all things circular…
FWIW, folks really ought to keep in mind that the solar system is dominated by Orbital Resonances and all sorts of things happen at similar times for no good reason other than that they have balanced their energy over millions of years via small nudges. This paper:
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/8/3814.full
Posits and presents evidence for a tidal influence on the climate of Earth, caused by the moon, with periods noticed that match changes of the lunar orbit perigee and planar tilt. One period noted is almost identical to the 179? ish year solar cycle.
This illustrates both a value and a risk from ‘wiggle matching’. I can give something usable, but for all the wrong reasons or no reason at all. At the same time, it can easily lead to what IS causal.
So all the running off to look at solar internal dynamics may simply be missing the point that the sun, moon, and earth have been wobbling together for a long time and have their tune in harmony… and what wiggle matches to a Solar / Jupiter / Saturn orbital fit might be a Lunar / Earth tidal effect (that just happens to be synchronized).
Oh, and the Taurid Meteors are also in a Resonant Orbit and might well have a periodic impact (literally!) that shows up in the ‘few thousand year’ periodic cold “issues”. We’re presently near the outer edge of the meteoric cluster mass and our orbit slowly comes back to the middle of the track while the “main lump” of the Taurids vs the Earth also have to sync up arrival times. The product of those two looks like it is in sync with Bond Events (speculative…) so it may just be added meteor dust from a Resonant Orbit beat frequency.
So please do not disparage the folks who ‘wiggle match’ to planetary positions. It might well be that the planets are not causal of the event, yet causal of the Orbital Resonance that actually drives the (as yet undiscovered) agent of the event.

phlogiston
March 23, 2012 4:08 am

Why is the study of gravitational and barycentric effects treated like voodoo or witchcraft?
There is nothing more controversial here than the proposal that two masses might exert a gravitational pull on eachother (there – I’ve said it!!).
It is well accepted that some of the the Milankovich orbital parameter oscillations are due to interaction with other planets particularly the Jovian ones. So why all the jowl-flapping about a possible climate influence?
Here are some papers detailing further this thrillingly controversial idea of gravity:
http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2010/EGU2010-9559.pdf
http://syrte.obspm.fr/jsr/journees2008/Sidorenkov.pdf
http://www.netpilot.ca/geocryology/annals/volume4/volume4.pdf

Affizzyfist
March 23, 2012 5:05 am

Above “Seems like the NSIDC sea ice graphs are broken” They ALWAYS break down when ice goes normal or above . They don’t like it just you see how in the coming weeks they will try to adjust the whole thing down again

Myrrh
March 23, 2012 6:19 am

phlogiston says:
March 23, 2012 at 4:08 am
Why is the study of gravitational and barycentric effects treated like voodoo or witchcraft?
There is nothing more controversial here than the proposal that two masses might exert a gravitational pull on eachother (there – I’ve said it!!).
==========
Because gravity isn’t included in warmist physics – they have empty space instead, based on the very basic descriptions of ideal gas in a container without temperature or pressure variation..
..so all their arguments are without volume, weight and attraction.
And as they have no sound in their atmosphere so they can’t hear any arguments to the contrary.
[NB which is why they have radiation in a vacuum and no convection, why their gases are not buoyant in air, why they are ‘well-mixed’; an atmosphere of empty space with molecules like hard dots bouncing off each other at hight speeds, etc. as they spontaneously diffuse through nothing unrestrained by gravity – hard to credit that they have no concept at all of our fluid voluminous gas ocean above us, weighing down a ton on our shoulders..
..but not only do they appear to be utterly oblivious to it, they argue it doesn’t exist. And shout at everyone who tries to point out the real world around us.
http://mcat-review.org/phases-equilibria.php
“Ideal gas
•definition
◦An ideal gas consists of pointy dots moving about randomly and colliding with one another and with the container wall. The ideal gas obeys the kinetic molecular theory of gases and has the following properties.
■Random molecular motion.
■No intermolecular forces.
■No (negligible) molecular volume.
■Perfectly elastic collisions (conservation of total kinetic energy).
◦You can treat gases as ideal gases at:
■Low pressures
■High temperatures
◦Deviation from the ideal occurs at high pressure and low temperature. At these conditions, the gas molecules are “squished” together. When the gas molecules are so close together, they experience intermolecular interactions. Also, the molecular volume becomes significant when the total volume is squished down so much. The intermolecular attractions will cause collisions to be sticky and inelastic. At the extremely high pressures and low temperatures, gases cease to be gases at all – they condense into liquids.
◦Ideal gases behave according to the ideal gas law. ”
Real gases don’t..
Instead of gravity they have pressure created by hard dots of things they call oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide bouncing off the inner surface of their greenhouse through which no direct heat from the Sun can enter… That’s why they have no water cycle in their comic cartoon energy budget – their clouds appear by magic in an atmosphere of empty space where gas molecules can’t separate out as they’re all madly dashing about at great speeds bouncing off each other..
..because they have no way to form.
Empty vessels make much noise.

Ranger Joe
March 23, 2012 10:07 am

I am an unschooled dirt dwelling troglodyte with a deep interest in all things natural and scientific. I would like to add my two cents on the weighty cosmic matters being discussed here. I thought that years ago astronomers discovered possible planets around distant stars by the wobble of the star as it travelled through space. I can’t express myself mathematically like all you brilliant guys on this website…which I love to pieces (and I know Einstein’s God is a numbers guy). I remember them saying that this wobbling was evidence that something…perhaps a solar system like ours…was tugging it willy nilly all over creation like a drunken dog sled team. Maybe the gravitational tug of orbiting bodies might mess with the physical processes of the parent star. Somebody pointed out here that a tiny sun grazing comet seemed to trigger a solar prominence. The sun has been extremely moody as of late and the earth has had some wild weather extremes. My TV picture has been pixilating like crazy and my PC is possessed by imps and demons. Suffice it to say…something’s up. Doesn’t chaos theory say that a butterfly in Hong Kong can cause a hurricane in Dallas? Please don’t yell at me Leif.

Septic Matthew/Matthew R Marler
March 23, 2012 11:12 am

Nicola Scafetta: I hope that Anthony reads and realizes that there are two guys arguing improperly thinking that they know everything:
On that I disagree with you, fwiw. There have been rather specific criticisms directed at the present paper, and you have an opportunity to rebut those criticisms. Some readers find some criticisms more important than others (other readers, other criticisms), but all of the criticisms deserve specific rebuttals, as far as I can see. In particular, the modeling has to produce actual model temperature values that can be compared to past temperature records (hindcasting) and future temperature values (forecasting, predicting, projecting) in order to test the accuracy of the model. I can not find (maybe I missed it and you can direct me to it) where your “generic units” have ever been converted/transformed to an actual model for temperatures.
Willis Eschenbach: I’m sorry, Nicola, but that’s totally unresponsive. You have cited a badly failed prediction as support for your claims.
Willis is correct. Dr Scafetta cited a paper, Willis checked the paper and found that, on the particular detail for which Dr Scafetta cited the paper, evidence after the paper was published showed the claim cited by Dr Scafetta to have been falsified. Something else in the paper may have been correct (as averred by Dr Scafetta in response to an earlier post by Willis Eschenbach), but the specific point for which Dr Scafetta cited the paper was not supported.

Septic Matthew/Matthew R Marler
March 23, 2012 11:16 am

Terry Oldberg: You’ve erred. That’s not a “prediction” but rather is a “projection.”The two words reference distinct ideas.
Someone may attempt to refer to two distinct ideas, but practically (or “operationally”) there is no difference. Either the future observations are close enough to the modeled values that the theory can be taken seriously, or they are too discrepant. Whether the modeled values for the future values are called “projections”, “predictions”, or “forecasts”, if they are inaccurate enough then the theory behind the model fails the test.

Reply to  Septic Matthew/Matthew R Marler
March 23, 2012 2:04 pm

Septic Matthew/Matthew R Marler (March 23, 2012 at 11:16 am):
To conflate the idea that is referenced by “projection” with the idea that is referenced by “prediction” is to make the idea that is referenced by “projection” identical to the idea that is referenced by “prediction” and also not identical to it. A consequence is for Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction to be violated. Aristotle’s law is a true proposition. The negation of Aristotle’s law is a false proposition.
Through the use of the negated law as a false premise to an argument, one can lead people to a conclusion which they believe to be true when this conclusion is false or unproved. Thus, unless one’s purpose is to mislead, it is always best to maintain the distinction between the idea that is referenced by “projection” and the idea that is referenced by “prediction.” A consequence from maintenance of this distinction is for it to be revealed that predictions are falsifiable while projections are not. As you may know, falsifiability is the distinguishing feature of a theory that is “scientific” in nature. By conflating the two ideas one leads people to the conclusion that a theory is scientific when it is not.

Septic Matthew/Matthew R Marler
March 23, 2012 11:26 am

Wayne Job: When new science is presented only those with a bias attack like bulldogs, being sceptical is fine but an open and inquiring mind is finer.
That is not normative in science. The scientist should expect criticism from all points of view, and be prepared to defend claims against the criticisms. It does not matter whether the bulldog-like attacks come from friends or enemies, people with or without bias — what matters is that the attacks be based on science and evidence, and they they be responded to with reference to science and evidence. Science is unique in emphasizing that a theory must be subjected to skeptical attack before it is given credence. Critical review, aka “attack” is a job for all who have open and inquiring minds.
My judgment after my review of the postings here is that (most of) the criticisms are on point and based on science (there are a few I can not evaluate, hence my qualification “most of”.)

susan smith
March 23, 2012 1:21 pm

Let me make one more comment. Nicola Scafetta, Please just ignore these criticisms appearing in a blog, and deal with any criticisms you get through journals. If someone is so convinced that your methodology and conclusions are wrong, they can try to publish their own papers to that effect. Today I finally checked on the background of two of your main critics, none of them have even a Masters degree from what I could find, or a formal training in an area related to climate science, meteorology, etc. But that did not seem to prevent some to endow Dr. designation to one, I guess because of the tone of certainty. I am somewhat amazed that work experience in coding and IT or construction management can give so much of self-assurance in climate science. These comments are all rather amusing to read, but I find it difficult to assign credibility to your critics from what I could find about their background. These criticisms clearly go beyond legitimate academic criticisms.

March 23, 2012 1:49 pm

susan smith says: March 23, 2012 at 1:21 pm
“These criticisms clearly go beyond legitimate academic criticisms.”
Thank you, but it is not me that you need to convince. It is Anthony.

tallbloke
March 23, 2012 2:01 pm

I just discovered some startling evidence which supports Scafetta’s tidal theory
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/the-sun-dances-the-soho-two-step/

March 23, 2012 2:15 pm

Joachim Seifert:
The battle I’m waging is to maintain the distinction between the idea referenced by the term “prediction” and the idea referenced by the term “projection.” To substitute the term “forecast” for its synonym “prediction” does not win this battle.

Gail Combs
March 23, 2012 2:29 pm

susan smith says: March 23, 2012 at 1:21 pm
“These criticisms clearly go beyond legitimate academic criticisms.”
______________________________________________
Argument by authority Susan?
Since when did someone with a PhD attached to his name become god?
I have run into PhD’s who were dead wrong. Scientists do not have a monopoly on truth and sometimes someone from outside of a narrow discipline can blow them away. I know this because I have done so on at least two occasions, WITHOUT anything more than a B.S. and common sense.

Gail Combs
March 23, 2012 2:33 pm

Dr. Scafetta, I should have added that my comment to Susan Smith is no reflection on you. I hold you in high regard because you are willing to “run through the gauntlet” here at WUWT.

u.k.(us)
March 23, 2012 2:45 pm

Nicola Scafetta says:
March 23, 2012 at 1:49 pm
susan smith says: March 23, 2012 at 1:21 pm
“These criticisms clearly go beyond legitimate academic criticisms.”
Thank you, but it is not me that you need to convince. It is Anthony.
========================
You sent the paper to Anthony, knowing full well it would be closely examined.
Either the paper is convincing or it isn’t, any blame lies with the author not the publisher.

March 23, 2012 2:47 pm

There was once a violinist who could tame any wild animal. At a circus, two of the three fierce lions immediately sat down and stopped roaring when they heard the violist. When the third lion was released, it ran up to the violinist and ate him.
The two other lions were very unhappy. “Why did you do that?” they asked the third lion.
“We were enjoying the music.”
The third lion puts its paw to its ear and said. “What?”
The book says; The third lion ate the violinist because it was deaf .

So, professor Scafetta, be very, very careful when playing your violin. 🙂

Septic Matthew/Matthew R Marler
March 23, 2012 3:32 pm

Terry Oldburg: By conflating the two ideas one leads people to the conclusion that a theory is scientific when it is not.
So tell us the procedures that you can use to distinguish one from the other. Lack of procedures for distinguishing this from that, or whether anything is true, is one of Aristotle’s weaknesses, usually pointed out by contrasting him with Galileo.

Reply to  Septic Matthew/Matthew R Marler
March 23, 2012 4:31 pm

Septic Matthew/Matthew R Marler March23, 2012 at 3:32 PM:
Good question! The relation from the complete set of predictions that are made by a study’s model to the set of independent events in this study’s statistical population is one-to-one. It is by drawing a sample from this population and comparing the relative frequencies of the predicted to the observed outcomes of the events that one falsifies or validates the model.In a model that makes projections, there is no population hence no possibility of falsifying or validating the model. If you were to search for the population underlying models referenced by the IPCC in AR4, you’d search in vain.

Septic Matthew/Matthew R Marler
March 23, 2012 3:37 pm

Susan Smith: I find it difficult to assign credibility to your critics from what I could find about their background.
Check the references that they cite.

March 23, 2012 3:58 pm

@ Terry Oldberg, consider a typical biology textbook drawing of a cell. In most texts a schematised cell is presented that contains a nucleus, a cell membrane, mitochondria, a Golgi body, endoplasmic reticulum and so on. In a botany textbook the cell schematic will contain chloroplasts and an outer cell wall, while a zoology text will omit those items. The cell is a model in a large group of interrelated models that enable us to understand the operations of all cells. The model is not a nerve cell, nor is it a muscle cell, nor a pancreatic cell; it stands for all of these.
Many other models are presented in cell biology when one zooms in on the inside of the cell. For example, when energy transfer is considered, we look at a model of the mitochondrion. In the case of the cell there is no mathematical object; there are no equations describing it, and yet the schematic drawing is not of one particular cell; it is an idealised cell or model.
Here we find no prediction, nor projection, no mathematical equation standing for a theory. It seems that by your description as I understand it from your essay at Climate Etc (which I enjoyed BTW) our biological models are not scientific just because they are not mathematical.
Astronomy would also appear to be largely pseudoscience by your criterion of scientific theories and modelling and Popperian falsification.

March 23, 2012 4:08 pm

Septic Matthew/Matthew R Marler said @ March 23, 2012 at 3:32 pm

Lack of procedures for distinguishing this from that, or whether anything is true, is one of Aristotle’s weaknesses, usually pointed out by contrasting him with Galileo.

What on earth do you mean by this statement?

wayne Job