New paper in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics demonstrates that planets do not cause solar cycles

There is a fantastic plot of the effects of the planets on the sun. I’ll put a link below. The image represents the center of mass of the solar system, (the sun’s wobble so to speak) as a consequence of the positions of the planets.
In certain circumstances, it is seen that the center of mass of the solar system is not with the physical body of the sun itself but as much as 1/2 of a solar diameter about the sun.
It seems to me that the gravitational effects show that the planets themselves have told us that they effect each other and the relative position of the sun.
Consequently I view the study with a degree of skepticism.
http://members.optushome.com.au/vk6ysf/vk6ysf/Images/solarc2-1.jpg
Further, Galileo was quite right either. The sun is not the center of the solar system. Sometimes the sun shares the actual center, but must often the center of the solar system is outside the solar disc. Barycenter is the technical term I believe.
I suspect the effects of the planets on the sun are complicated and an appropriate model is not obvious to the authors.

Ah, yes, The Jupiter Effect, 1982. Yet another catastrophe that didn’t quite work out.

“…the planetary effects are *too small by several orders of magnitude* to be a main cause of the solar cycle (they can be at most a small modulation…”
“Too small by several orders of magnitude” also is a good explanation of why adding a hundred or so CO2 molecules per million in the atmosphere hasn’t resulted in catastrophic global warming. Not enough suds to wash.

The most likely culprit appears to be UV variability acting on ozone in the stratosphere and mesosphere.

UV is, in my opinion, more important than it has been given credit for. It is also likely important for ocean warming as it is the deepest penetrating solar radiation into the oceans (and ice). The UV variation also seems to be coincident with the magnetic variation so we likely get increases in cloud albedo at the same time that we get a decline in UV radiation. The two together may have a more significant impact than is currently appreciated.

„Hence, planetary influences should be ruled out as a possible cause of solar variability.
What is ‘solar variability’? Size? Color? Shape? Neutrino rate? Rotation speed? Brightness?
“Specifically, we improved the calculation of ainert in paper I and gave an alternative estimation.
If the tidal acceleration of Jupiter were important for the solar cycle then the tidal accelerations of Mercury, Venus and the Earth would be important too.”
If … If …
That’s bad logic/philosophy but not science.
s. here and here and here.
V.

Anthony, your comments on The Jupiter Effect are spot on. That piece of mysticism was right up there with Worlds in Collision and Chariots of the Gods. One thing to be said for Velikovsky; he genuinely believed in what he was writing. That’s not so clear with the Jupiter boys.
As for the “Oh wait..” syndrome, the Millerites famously got this wrong twice in the late 19th century in predicting the Second Coming. Their method of prediction was based on Bishop Ussher. After the second spectacular failure of the world to end, they disappeared for a few decades, re-emerging as Jehovah’s Witnesses.
People LIKE believing in catastrophism. What all of these various theories seem to have in common is to try to diminish the importance of human intelligence and achievement. In sum they are all an onslaught against the Enlightenment and rational thinking which brought us science and technology.

IF there is a corelation, there must be a reason for the corelation. The causality might be backwards, or there could be a cascade effect. But surely if there is a long sequence of corelation, there has to be some reason for it beyond the same coincidence happening over and over again.

I always found it an interesting coincidence that the average rotational period of the sun, (it varies from pole to equator) is about the same as the period of the lunar orbit around the earth.
… and the period of my 3 sister’s synchronized PMS….
They are all the same… go figure.

Kasuha says:
April 15, 2012 at 11:51 am
for instance March TSI varies by about 0.5 W/m2 over course of four years due to that and has shifted by about 2 W/m2 in last 100 years.
1: TSI [in March or any other month] varies 1.5 W/m2 over the six years of half a solar cycle and the 2 W/m2 change in the last 100 years is not established. BTW, during the year from January to July, TSI varies about 100 W/m2 simply due to the elipticity of the Earth’s orbit. None of this has anything to do with the planets.

Crispin in Johannesburg says:
April 15, 2012 at 12:21 pm
The sun has very low frequency waves pulsing around it continuously. It sings on a very low note. Does this have any effect on internal behaviour? Surely it must. It must be resonant too, or it would not persists at the same frequency.
Typical periods for these waves are of the order of 3 to 5 minutes.

This reminds of the “TSI variation is too small” argument against solar mechanism for multi-decadal climate change.

Leif, that’s argumentum ad ignorantiam and also very dogmatic. Paradigm paralysis?

A teacher struck my daughter when she was in grade 3. I went nuts. The principal of the school said it didn’t happen. about 28 days later my daughter came home with bruise marks on her arm from the same teacher. I took my daughter to the ER and had the “finger mark” bruises diagnosed and photographed.
I wrote a letter to the principle that if my daughter was ever touched by the teacher again i’d sue him and the school as well as have criminal charges laid.
27 days later that teacher was out on “sick” leave.
27 days after that she was out again… then the weekends got in the way and the pattern collapsed.
My point is that patterns avail themselves. It is contingent on us to discover the nature of the pattern. Why did the teacher freak out on my daughter at 27 day intervals? I don’t know. I speculate that she had a recurring event in her life, like a paycheck issue or a hormonal issue or her wicka group meetings influence her.
People are very good at sensing patterns and rhythms and 1s usually the foundation of the first guess in a new discovery. History is replete with people who thought that all that is to discovered is already discovered. In the mythological words attributed to Galileo…. yet it moves.

This topic does not seem to include the well known concept of self-organized criticality (SOC, Per Bak) —
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organized_criticality
For example, an artillery round is sometimes used to trigger an avalanche. Californians are waiting for a big earthquake, and the trigger could be very small as the stress slowly builds up to the rupture point. Thus one could get an approximate correlation of SOC events with tiny perturbations — and endless disputes from those who demand an impressive mechanism.

Authors say: their combined action over times of years may induce a small motion
e.g. at the solar surface…
This was already noted by Peter Hodges, and probably others. Does not this quote of the authors tend to support claims by the solar enthusiasts that gravitational effcts are not so small as to be negligible?
A “body blow” is not a knockout. If this is indeed a body blow, it will take many, many more such for a TKO.

On a lighter note I love Oliver’s “Iron Sun” theory. Neutron Repulsion makes a great power source to go between Fusion and Anti-Matter in my star fighter RPG. great science fiction.

This four-page paper provides both theoretical and empirical evidence of a physical planetary cause for the observed periodic variations in the differential rotation of sunspots:
Periodicities in the Sun’s “Torsional MHD oscillations” and planetary configuration,
Javaraiah, J.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1996BASI…24..351J
From p. 352:
“In the present paper we show that the amplitudes of the symmetric and antisymmetric torsional oscillations of the Sun depend upon the contribution of the major planets to the symmetric and asymmetric parts of the angular momentum of the solar system.”

One of the reasons I was first attracted to WUWT? was all the interesting perspectives that were presented. One of the reasons I hated reading realclimate was the dogmatic insecurity presented. It is creeping into this blog even though Anthony definitely tries to be reasonable. Not a big fan of the barycentric idea ( it is apparently used to locate extrasolar planets) as a solar influence. Even though I do not agree with it, I am intelligent enough to know that we do NOT have all the pieces to the many puzzles of our universe. The insecure closed minds are doing a great deal of harm to what should be a friendly informative discussion.
Another point is that a person (everyone) cannot be right about everything. Every great figure from science has some important contributions, but also a great number of things they were wrong about. Often due to lack of all the information necessary to draw correct conclusions.
Chill and enjoy the process. Bring your best information. People can draw their own conclusions. My humble opinion only, for what it is worth.
A friendly question to Dr. Svalgaard. Isn’t the earth’s magnetic field protecting us from the “far stronger” solar wind? Or did I miss something? Be nice, thank you.

Leif Svalgaard says:
“Not sure who the ignoramus is here.”
I am sure. You are. I am too, just like everybody else. We’re all ignorant of something.
Maybe the argument from lack of imagination fits better – P is too incredible or I cannot imagine how P could possibly be true; therefore P must be false. It’s a logical fallacy.

This is the correct link to the Javaraiah paper referred to by me at 1:21 pm:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1996BASI…24..351J
Please note that the last part (…24..351J) needs to be included in the link, and the link must be a single color to open correctly in most browsers. It will open if copied to your web browser as a text line.

@clipe
You must be dreaming. By 4 orders of magnitude.
@Leif
Thanks re the frequency. There is a lesson from HAM radio history that relates to frequency. In the early days LF was king. Transmissions reached hundreds of miles. As transmission frequency rose so did distance until one fine day they tried 14MHZ and the whole world was ringing with chattering in Morse Code.
I predict that when the low frequencies of the sun are probed sudden things will appear. Someone above mentioned the sun spots and planets. There is a clear relationship between the butterfly pattern and the position of the Earth-Moon-Venus barycenter. I found that very confirming re the ability of planets to affect the sun.

Thank you for your kind response. Please correct me if I misunderstood, but does your response not contradict what you posted to Vukcevic?

Schitzree says:
April 15, 2012 at 1:13 pm
The problem I have with the “too small by several orders of magnitude” argument is the same one I have with the “It must be CO2 causing the warming because we don’t know of anything else that could do it” argument. Evidence can prove something but a lack of evidence doesn’t necessarily disprove it.
===================================================
You could try calculating it yourself. The planetary and solar masses
(to about 26 decimal places) as well as their orbital diameters are
available from NASA’s website. (I haven’t looked recently but I had
no trouble finding them in 1998 …). Watch out for Saturn’s orbit: when
I looked, NASA were apologising for the orbit having an uncertainty of
about 240 metres …. (ROTFL — that only matters for slingshotting
space craft, not for what we are looking at!!)
The force of gravity between two objects varies directly as the product of
the masses involved and inversely to the square of the distance between
them (inverse square law) thus:
F = G(m1m2)/d^2
where G is the gravitational constant = 6.67300 × 10-11 m3 kg-1 s-2
There was a bit of hysteria at the end of the last century because of an
alignment of the planets (1997-8? ). An English insurance company hired
an “expert” to investigate it’s likely liabilities (I’m sure the expert knew
how to charge for his “services” appropriately)
Rather than dismiss the Insurance Company’s fears as trivial—the most
liability I saw they had was due to hysteria—I worked the exercise for
myself with respect to the forces applied to the Earth. I took the orbits
as circular for ease of use. I normalised all results to the Sun’s force
so the Sun’s gravitational force on the Earth = 1.
Jupiter’s value was 0.001, the moon’s 10,000. Distance counts!
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and the rest were at least (if my memory serves me
well) at least one order of magnitude less than Jupiter’s contribution when
summed. At 10^-4 or less, the forces are too trivial to matter for anything
except the most subtle effects—and these would probably take millions
of years to be felt.
More calculation showed the extra tidal height caused by the alignment
was somewhat less than 1mm—so no tidal waves or king tides to worry
about. Now, this is for all the planets lined up and the forces exerted on
the Earth.
Given the Sun’s immense mass and energy, and the distances the larger
planets are from the Sun, the forces acting against it by the planets are
trivial—too trivial for the observed effects. There’s a good book published
some years ago called “Orders of Magnitude” (I think that was it’s title)
which is worth absorbing. It brings home the reality of the differences between
the orders of magnitude we experience really well.

Any effect on the sun that there might be from the planets only has an indirect relevance to climate changes particuarly since there is plenty of internal system variability in addition to anything that the sun affects.
However, the sun does seem to have some sort of top down effect on the atmosphere and it is apparently out of proportion to TSI changes but not so much out of proportion to UV changes.
If we were to note any sort of correlation between planetary positions and solar activity levels that would be helpful in predicting one component of the cause of climate changes.
We wouldn’t even need to know why the correlation occurs. It would still be useful for predicting trends and changes in trends which is about the best we could expect from the current science anyway.
We will soon enough find out whether the current quiet sun causes or contributes to a downward trend in tropospheric temperatures.
If it does, then that will be another success for those who anticipated both the low cycle 24 and a cooling climate in consequence.
For my part it doesn’t matter to me why the sun varies or what causes it. There is enough delay between changes in solar behaviour and the resulting effect on albedo and ocean heat content for us to be able to get an idea of future climate trends from what the sun is doing now.
Accurate predictions of solar changes would however be nice to have and it is interesting that the barycentric crowd got it righter than the solar establishment. Successful predictions are supposed to carry weight aren’t they ?

This is hardly big news. Solar physicists have know for decades that the solar cycle is to do with an internal oscillation in the sun’s magnetic field, nothing to do with planets. See any textbook on the subject, such as Eugene Parker’s book.

While I’m on the subject of Orders of Magnitude (OoM):
The Earth’s atmosphere is about 78% Nitrogen, Oxygen is about 21%
(20.9% for the pedantic) and Argon at about 0.93%. All the other gases
make up the remaining 0.17%. —which is less the 2 thousandths of
the atmosphere. Of this, CO2 is at 0.039% (or 390 billionths).
Between the tropics (Cancer and Capricorn), water vapour can make up
up to about 4% of the atmosphere. At less than 0.04% of the atmosphere
CO2 is one one-hundredth of the quantity of H2O —or two Oom less—
and, unless it was a magic gas, it would have about the same ORDER
of influence with respect to water vapour.
But it seems CO2 does have a little magic about it (but not as much as
has been attributed— enter the Rayleigh Effect. The RE is a saturable
effect. It’s best known for making the sky blue and colouring the iris in
eyes. Beyond an initial influence on the atmosphere, each doubling of
CO2 has less and less effect on temperature. We are well past the initial
effect stage. Nir Shaviv (see his blog http://www.sciencebits.com) demonstrates
(mathematically) an absolute maximum sensitivity to such doubling of
1.5 degrees C. Sherman Idso arrives at a figure of about 0.4 degrees C from
about 6 different paths. Others have suggested about 0.15 degrees C.

vukcevic says:
April 15, 2012 at 3:01 pm
For the readers of the blog, lines represent magnetic field and [field] aligned currents.
There are no field aligned currents and no magnetic back reaction on the sun. These will have to travel at the Alfven speed which is an order of magnitude less than the outward speed. The ‘current’ you are talking abound are streaming and counterstreaming electrons bouncing back and forth between the ‘foot points’ on the sun and thus there is no net current. The electron flux is very small compared to solar wind density and is mirrored back before actually reaching the sun. I have explained this a zillion times. You are still hard of leaning.
vukcevic says:
April 15, 2012 at 3:02 pm
Steve I’d like to draw your attention at Dr. Svalgaard’s quote
Except that the correlation is not REALLY good. It is in fact rather lousy and breaks down at the left hand side of your graph and before.

Sheesh. I’d like to add my voice to those saying just because we haven’t found a mechanism does not mean it can’t exist. The universe is wonderful with plenty of secrets yet to discover. A few centuries back *everybody* was certain that the sun went round the earth. Then Copernicus came along to say different. A few years back pretty much *everybody* said GCR’s were orders of magnitudes too small to nucleate clouds. Now we have Jasper Kirkbys physical CERN results which say different. Anthony: don’t decry people for looking and asking – that’s what it’s all about.

Steven Mosher says:
April 15, 2012 at 1:32 pm
In the begining climate skepticism was sound. Folks wanted to see the data, wanted to see the code, wanted to understand the physics before they claimed knowledge. Over time the skeptical position has been infected by people who actually believe they Know that the planets influence the sun and they Know that the sun drives the climate.
For some of us, climate skepticism has to be more than just haggling over the value of CO2 sensitivity and amplification. The present paper does not (yet) try to deny the existence of solar cycles – only to falsify claims of strong planetary forcing. Climatic cycles are clear over all timescales as are solar oscillations – but to frustrate easy attribution, their frequencies modulate. So the real scientist (who grew up just being curious about things) wants to know what are these oscillations and what causes them, and if they can be predicted in future.
However establishment climate scientists (who grew up with an instinct of which playground bullys to fawn in front of) established the CAWG hypothesis by looking only at the 20th century. “Preindustrial” climate was quietly assumed to be static in Edenic perfection before this (a position correctly ridiculed by Lindzen). The coincident rises of CO2 (over a volcano in the Pacific) and global temperatures was considered proof enough for a complacent view that the science was settled as a basis for activism.
It has been the skeptic community forcefully questioning this simplistic hypothesis and bringing alternative views, that has forced the AGW community – retrospectively and in a bolt-on way – to wake up to the existence of climate history data on all timescales over the earth’s age, that show fluctuation to be the norm, with suggestive frequencies but which resist stable correlation with any fixed periodic forcing. (Again as Lindzen puts it, it is climate stasis that would be the oddity – something akin to climate death.) The AGW brigade revisits data-series after data-series with sometimes absurdly concocted tortuous stories of how CO2 responds to temperature forcing then leads then amplifies, and is still the controller of climate even during significant periods when temperatures and CO2 levels move in the opposite directions. The latest example of this is the attempt to pin the AMO on anthropogenic aerosols (many AGW faithful reading the paper will at least be learning about the AMO for the first time.) Sort of education by rebuttal.
Callebaut et al. may have succeeded in showing the model of solar variation as a nonlinear oscillator strongly forced by orbital periods is not sustainable. This has in a sense always been obvious – if it were strongly forced then the fit with orbital periods and harmonics would be trivial and beyond dispute – no-one argues about what causes the sea tides for instance.
If solar (and also terrestrial climatic) cycles are NONLINEAR OSCILLATORS [linguistic note: the greek language would be useful here, it has 4 “if”s, (1) if and it is, (2) if and it isnt, (3) if and it might be but might not be and (4) I wish it was but it is not; the appropriate ones here are 1 or possibly 4 ] then there are 3 types of such nonlinear oscillators. These are (1) strongly and (2) weakly periodically forced from outside, and (3) internal (no external forcing).
What is ignored here is the other possibility that solar (and climatic) oscillations are weakly periodically forced. Lin et al showed that in the case of weak periodic forcing, the relation between the forcing frequency and the resultant system oscillation can be very complex and it can be hard or impossible to find a signature of the forcing frequency.
Ref:
Resonance tongues and patterns in periodically forced reaction-diffusion systems. Anna Lin et al., DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.69.066217, Cite as: arXiv:nlin/0401031v1 [nlin.PS].
Consider the well known corn starch forced nonlinear complex spatiotemperal oscillations :

In particular look at the periodic behaviour of the high order structures like holes and fingers. It would be easy to show this movement is on no way related to the 120 Hz forcing frequency of the bowl shaking. Does this disprove that the shaking causes the periodically moving structures? – no.
(Note the complex and possibly intractable relationship between weak forcer and system frequency / pattern raises questions of proof and falsifiability of such a model – some hard mathematical thinking might be needed to look for appropriate clues.)
So strong orbital forcing by itself might be a straw man. It may well be that the forces involved are far too low for this to be a possiblility. But in the stillness of space uninterrupted by other forces for millions of years, who is to say that even very small periodic gravitational fluctuations from the planets might set in motion weakly forced periodic oscillation.
An the third possibility of course is internally generated nonlinear oscillation such as in the classic Belousov-Zhabotinsky reactor, which requires no outside forcing.

I did an experiment in my lab once… just for the heck of it since one of my old profs mentioned it one day. It is relevant.
In a very large room light a cigarette and allow the plume to develop. After about 3 minutes a laminar stream of smoke about 24 inches tall is formed above the cigarette it is very stable an looks like a solid.
At that point and while well on the other side of the room, simply snap your fingers.
The plume immediately disrupts and produces an log parade of VonKarmen vortices.
The acoustic energy from the snap is long dissipated while the cigarette smoke plume continues to generate the votices. I propose that small gravitational events trigger swirling events on the sun that outlast the trigger event.
Try it yourself with a candle plume.

Leif,
Fluid instability requires infinitesimal triggers. A step gravitational event can have long lasting and durable consequences.
Look here:

Volker Doormann says:
April 15, 2012 at 2:51 pm
Over time the skeptical position has been infected by people who reject that the planets influence the sun and they Know that the sun is not the driver the climate.
When asked for proof, when asked for a physical mechanism with proper forces and units, when asked for experiments, falsifiable experiments about the existence of time, the existence of space, the existence of velocities, the prove that gravitational forces between objects are delayed after Einstein – in case of Quaoar/Sun 6 hours in one direction – without any effect of the trace of the bodies after Kepler, the response is silence or very silence.
If there are simple questions whether the space is infinite or finite, whether has time a beginning or whether time has an end, whether physicians have falsified the dimension of time, there is only entertainment consumed.
If the folks want to understand the physics before they claimed knowledge, and claim knowledge about the physics of time, the physics of space, the physics of velocity, that’s fine. What velocity has a ball which is fling by a woman walking backwards in a running train to South East in Finland out of the window in noon on the 3th of January while the distance Earth/Sun is lowest, but the Earth is running clever without any energy input?
Who have knowledge how gravitational force is transmitted from Moon the Earth? Who have knowledge why time is decreases by gravitational force, and atomic clock running slower?
Just been discussing the last:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/08/a-couple-of-pertinent-quotes/#comment-956548
Waking up this morning and recalling a thought I had about this yesterday re that light slows down through different mediums, it’s slowed down by our atmosphere and slows down even more in the ocean, that is, different pressures affect it, I’ve decided to check to find out exactly what is being adjusted in GPS. It’s not Einstein’s ‘time dilation’, it’s adjustment for a physical phenomenon that there’s a difference in travelling from east to west from travelling west to east. Nothing to do with Einstein’s speed slowing down time.
The GPS and the Constant Velocity of Light
Paul Marmet
“One must conclude that there exists no space-time distortion of any kind. It is no longer necessary to fascinate people with the magic of relativity. Unless we accept the absurd solution that the distance between N.Y. to S.F. is smaller than the distance between S.F. and N.Y., we have to accept that in a moving frame, the velocity of light is different in each direction. As mentioned above, this difference is even programmed in the GPS computer in order to get the correct Global Positioning. This proves that the experimental velocity of light with respect to a moving observer is c±v.”
http://www.newtonphysics.on.ca/illusion/index.html

Robert Sheaffer says:
April 15, 2012 at 11:40 am
“…tidal forces vary with the inverse fourth power of the distance…”
Inverse cube.

As a teacher and future administrator (which seems unlikely as I don’t play along with the music fad of the day), I can tell you for sure, belief trumps data, maths, proofs, and direct observations. Belief trumps all things. Period. And the plethora of “But…” comments coming at breakneck speed above proves it.

So, Pamela, you should be able to explain it all to us then, ……….

Leif Svalgaard says:
April 15, 2012 at 1:49 pm
SØREN BUNDGAARD says:
April 15, 2012 at 1:32 pm
We are now able to identify planets in other solar systems, because their sun wobbles. We know their numbers of planets, their size and so on, but we could not measure any planet impact on our sun, if we measured it from another Solar System?
This is a good point. Unfortunately no effects on planets around other stars on stellar activity have yet been found. See the final slides of http://www.leif.org/research/AGU%20Fall%202011%20SH34B-08.pdf
But this research is still ongoing, so perhaps one day we will get the final proof/disproff of this, althoung I have already gotten arguments from various sides that our solar system is unique in just the right combination of planets, etc, and that therefore only in our system will the planets drive solar activity. So strong is the belief in the planetary hypothesis than it, almost by definition, becomes impossible to falsify. Go figure…

This paper is taking Leif’s heliocentrism to extremes. As Soren Bungaard states (and also see http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/extrasolar_planets/extrasolar/radial_velocity.html ) Extra solar planets are found by detecting the parent star’s wobble. Or as the link above puts it:
“The radial velocity method, also known as Doppler spectroscopy, is the most effective method for locating extrasolar planets with existing technology. Though other approaches hold great promise for the future, the vast majority of Exoplanets discovered so far were detected by this method.
The radial velocity method relies on the fact that a star does not remain completely stationary when it is orbited by a planet. It moves, ever so slightly, in a small circle or ellipse, responding to the gravitational tug of its smaller companion. When viewed from a distance, these slight movements affect the star’s normal light spectrum, or color signature. If the star is moving towards the observer, then its spectrum would appear slightly shifted towards the blue; if it is moving away, it will be shifted towards the red.”
We are so FORTUNATE our Earth is orbiting the only star in the universe that does not wobble due to its orbiting planets
Perhaps Anthony you can persuade Leif to provide the mathematics supporting this uniqueness of our home star. Or alternatively, he could produce a paper showing how misleading the claims are for finding extrasolar planets using Doppler spectroscopy to detect changes in stars’ radial velocity, as they are based on incorrect mathematics. This would be a seminal moment overturning a scientific consensus!
And no – there is no sarc tag – there are two totally contradictory claims here. One of them must be false.

BTW in my post I am assuming that modulations of the solar magnetic field has a strong influence on Earth’s cloudiness through the Svensmark effect, which I see as well supported by CLOUD results, the Danish experiments, Nir Shaviv and Svenmark’s papers, etc. etc. See Kirkby’s slides at http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073 .

Somehow my hyperlinks have gotten crossed here. I was quoting sentences from the paper at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/28/astronomical-society-of-australia-publishes-new-paper-warning-of-solar-quieting-and-global-cooling/ ( http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/138/paper/AS06018.htm )

ARUN
I agree. a 180 degree phase change of a forcing input to the following response (resonance) is not obvious to 95% of scientists yet it exists in nature and any electrical engineer or physicist should be able to verify this.
Exceedingly small inputs yield infinite response… furthermore, if you bang a system it always rings in its naturally resonant harmonics. Whether that applies here I can’t say but simple minds breed simple models and simpler minds breed no models at all.
I say since we see wobbly stars all over the place… it bear reason that planets gravitationally effect stars so why not ours.

anthony, whats your theory on why the sun has a 11 yr cycle and flips polarity every 22 yrs?

u.k.(us) says:
April 15, 2012 at 7:09 pm
There is some background there that you may not be aware of. If you read her posts, she always claims to have it all figured out (climate) and talks of the AMO, PDO, etc. and acts as if she understands the entire mechanisms and process, yet never explains herself fully or what drives those processes. I am afraid you have confused lack of kindness with calling her bluff.

ed says:
April 15, 2012 at 7:35 pm
anthony, whats your theory on why the sun has a 11 yr cycle and flips polarity every 22 yrs?
Here is the modern theory of the solar cycle: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1008.2432v2.pdf and it flips every 11 years, not 22.
vukcevic says:
April 15, 2012 at 3:50 pm
Since the ‘magnetic rope’ is connected to the source, i.e. the sun, the short circuit effect is fed back to the solar surface
And here is where you go wrong. Such changes can only be transmitted at the Alfven speed which is less than 50 km/sec compared to the 500 km/sec outward flow of the solar wind [or even faster for a CME].
Geoff Sharp says:
April 15, 2012 at 4:32 pm
Interesting that de Jager offers no rebuttal to the Wollf & Patrone paper which of course has nothing to do with tidal effects.
Part of the reason is that the W&P paper is an embarrassment to the authors and no rebuttal is needed. You have been told several times what is wrong with W&P. Here is the story once more: http://www.leif.org/research/Gough-Comment-on-Wolff-Patrone.doc
Douglas Gough is the foremost expert of solar dynamics.

David Ball says:
April 15, 2012 at 4:42 pm
I wish Dr. Svalgaard would take the time to look closely at your stuff and help guide you.
I don’t think anybody has looked more carefully at Vuk’s stuff than I. I have tried to guide and help him, but Vuk is learning resistant. A trait often found in this pseudo-debate.

Leif Svalgaard says:
April 15, 2012 at 8:35 pm
“I don’t think anybody has looked more carefully at Vuk’s stuff than I. I have tried to guide and help him, but Vuk is learning resistant. A trait often found in this pseudo-debate.”
Is not constructive dialogue.

David Ball says:
April 15, 2012 at 8:49 pm
“I don’t think anybody has looked more carefully at Vuk’s stuff than I. I have tried to guide and help him, but Vuk is learning resistant. A trait often found in this pseudo-debate.”
Is not constructive dialogue.
Dialogue with whom? I have tried to educate Vuk about the facts and the physics, but he refuses to learn. This is not rocket science, but simple application of well-known physics. As constructive as can be.

Anthony says “Looks to me like Barycentrism just took a body blow – Anthony”
I think that Anthony was too exited. The things are quite more complex, and they are already extensively explained in my latest published paper:
N. 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.” Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics in press (2012).
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/Scafetta_JStides.pdf
First, the new paper by Callebaut, de Jager and Duhau [2012] simply repeats the argument that the planetary tides are quite small, which is well known, and de Jager simply repeats the arguments on the same topics in his 2005 papers.
A response to these people is already contained in my paper at page 13, where I wrote
“For example, de Jager and Versteegh (2005) further developed the classical argument that planetary tidal elongation on the Sun is tiny. However, this critique simply requires the existence of a strong amplification feedback mechanism that may be provided by a tidal stimulation of the nuclear fusion rate (Wolff and Patrone, 2010), which perhaps may be also helped by collective synchronization resonance effects.”
Note that Callebaut et al., do not say anything about the above issues.
However, the best response to Callebaut et al. [2012] is written in de Jager and Versteegh (2005) itself where in the conclusion the authors say:
“Therefore they cannot significantly influence the solar dynamo unless a completely different hypothesis is forwarded”.
So, the things are simply not as by Callebaut, de Jager and Duhau think that they are.
About the other arguments referring the reproduction of the longer cycles such as the Grand Minima, the millennial cycles and so on, I am sorry for Anthony, but my paper answers them all.
From the abstract of my paper:
“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 (last12,000years) up to now. The quasi-secular beat oscillations hindcast reasonably well the known prolonged periods of low solar activity during the last millennium known as Oort, Wolf, Sporer, Maunder and Dalton minima, as well as the seventeen 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, the secular solar maxima around 1870-1890, 1940-1950 and 1995-2005, and a secular upward trending during the 20th century.”
About the claim that Humkin Solheim, Stordahl [2011] do not confirm my results in my 2010 paper that focused on the decadal multidecadal scale, this is funny. Humkin et al. are using an ice core record to study the Holocene that does not have the precision of the global surface temperature records and anly the secular and above scale could be well detected. Humkin et al. study also a shorter local record since 1900 and this confirms my finding. Finally, Solheim wrote me many times saying that they are finding my same cycles.
This paper is no a body blow of any kind. Just a poor paper repeating things that are already very well known.
The thing are quite more complex.
First,

David Ball says:
April 15, 2012 at 7:53 pm
Nice of you to be a gentleman.
=============
You obviously don’t know the meaning of the word.

Dr. Svalgaard, I am not saying Vukcevic is right or wrong, but explain what he has found. Simples.

Leif Svalgaard says:
April 15, 2012 at 1:19 pm
The Earth’s orbit is not static and in calculating the effect the actual orbit [perturbations and all] are taken into account. It is even necessary when compensating for the orbital changes to take into account that the photons of TSI left the Sun 8 minutes before they hit the Earth. The point is that Earth’s orbit is what it is [changing all the time].
________________________________________
I’m glad that you confirm my conclusions.

Harriet Harridan says:
April 15, 2012 at 3:36 pm
Sheesh. I’d like to add my voice to those saying just because we haven’t found a mechanism does not mean it can’t exist. The universe is wonderful with plenty of secrets yet to discover. A few centuries back *everybody* was certain that the sun went round the earth. Then Copernicus came along to say different. A few years back pretty much *everybody* said GCR’s were orders of magnitudes too small to nucleate clouds. Now we have Jasper Kirkbys physical CERN results which say different. Anthony: don’t decry people for looking and asking – that’s what it’s all about.
————————————————————
Harriet, I assume that “everybody” excludes Pythagoras (6th century BC), Aristarchus (3rd century BC), and Copernicus (15th – 16th century AD), among others. And, these guys were not passing blog commenters.
Here’s hoping that the rest of your views are more soundly based in fact.

How may of you can state the relationship between a dinner plate spinning in the air and the rate of wobble that it experiances. By the way, the answer to that question underlied Feyman’s Nobel Prize. Sometimes what you think you know is wrong. Most times you don’t even notice.

Paul Marmet
“One must conclude that there exists no space-time distortion of any kind.
I do not know, what it means.
Physics is developed from history and social dimensions like meter, second, hour, day, week, year, kilogram or gram, and physics is using these definitions of kings or dead people, but none of these idols of physicians have any meaning in the science of nature; relevant in physics is only energy [J]. Because the nature has a_local property of electromagnetism, what means that nature is not a function of space, energies can interchanged in this nature. But the very thing is that the processes in nature ever only can be processed in the object ‘spacetime’, which is never to be separated in fragments. That spacetime is an object in nature we can see on the identity of distance/delay of energies in nature (echos) and the impedance is measured in units of [ohm] or [V/A] in the new defined dimensions in physics. An other fact, that spacetime is an element in nature, is the fact that the linearity of spacetime getting nonlinear in gravitational fields as we all know from the Mercury trace, which is different to the linear Kepler relation.
I do conclude from this that there is spacetime in nature and is modified by gravitational fields.
BTW. I wrote: “When asked for proof, when asked for a physical mechanism with proper forces and units, when asked for experiments, falsifiable experiments about the existence of time, the existence of space, the existence of velocities, the prove that gravitational forces between objects are delayed after Einstein – in case of Quaoar/Sun 6 hours in one direction – without any effect of the trace of the bodies after Kepler, the response is silence or very silence.“
QED. There is silence by the first claimer (S.M.).
There is a proverb in German: “Wash me the fur, however do not make me wet.” The rule is often claimed here by prominent regulars, last in the saying: show me planetary functions changing the terrestrial climate by varying the oven Sun, but don’t touch my climate point of view.
Accepted in this room.
V.

DirkH says:
>>“There is a clear relationship between the butterfly pattern and the position of the Earth-Moon-Venus barycenter. I found that very confirming re the ability of planets to affect the sun.”
>Got a source/graph link?
I had a quick look and didn’t find it in the folder so possibly not. The thing to search for is the EMV Barycentre because that was the topic. I was really surprised by the 5:2 resonance of Earth-Moon (taken as a single unit) and Venus, and the fact that anyone noticed a pattern at all between the position of the EMV barycentre and the shape of the butterfly pattern.. As I recall the author pointed particularly to the more equatorial portion of the chart.
From what I have read and the comments here, it is clear that for the effect of gravity (or in this case the net gravity of the EMV system) people assume the gravity works evenly on the whole sun. I am not yet convinced because denser (cooler) masses of gas should be affected more than hot gas of a similar volume and the sun rotates quickly enough to cause many ‘draggings’.
Thanks again Leif re the mosquito mass relative to the girl on the swing. Quite right on the relative mass even if pushed for a year. Now, put the girl in frictionless space and have the mosquito push cyclically for 4 billion years. That is 9 orders of magnitude more.
Another analogy is the mass of cosmic rays striking the earth relative to the mass of the atmosphere. Obviously ‘they cannot have any effect’ because of the relative mass difference, right?

Leif Svalgaard says:
April 15, 2012 at 8:22 pm
,Part of the reason is that the W&P paper is an embarrassment to the authors and no rebuttal is needed. You have been told several times what is wrong with W&P. Here is the story once more: http://www.leif.org/research/Gough-Comment-on-Wolff-Patrone.doc
Douglas Gough is the foremost expert of solar dynamics.
Appeal to authority.
Gough’s comment starts with this sentence:
Dear Leif
The paper by Wolff and Patrone narrates one of those fairy tales that has not gripped me sufficiently to read beyond the first few pages.
One of the advantages of having a closed mind is that it saves so much time.
Unlike Leif, at least Gough, in his other writings, has the decency to admit we don’t know how the Sun works.
When Wolff and Patrones paper has been answered in the literature, I’ll take the time to carefully study the argument. Gough completely missed what the Wolff Patrone mechanism is, probably because he didn’t read beyond the first few pages of their paper.
The embarrassment belongs to Leif for touting Gough’s comment as a rebuttal, not to the reviewers of Wolff and Patrone’s paper for accepting it.

Moolo said:
You seem to be relying on resonance. But the planets aren’t orbiting in anything like a coherent resonant pattern. How are Jupiter (orbital period 4,332 days) and Saturn (orbital period 10,759 days) going to set up any resonance in something churning away as fiercely as the Sun?
I reply: I don’t think you get the point. I said I don’t know. Futhermore I don’t think you know what resonance,i based on what you just wrote…… it isn’t simply division yielding integers….
In terms of periodic behavior the sun express one sunspot cycle in 11 trips of the earth around the sun. 1:11. It has a pole reversal 1:22. Expressing 1:2 sunspot cycle to pole reversal. THAT is observation. Also the moon orbits the earth in about 27.3 days and the average rotation of the sun is the same, about 27.3 days. 1:1. That is observation… even better than an equation. There are more of them. Again, periodic behavior, not resonance.
Mooloo said: Equations. Give me equations. Then, and only then, we can test what you say has some validity.
I say I prefer data….

Volker Doormann says:
April 15, 2012 at 11:33 pm
Paul Marmet
“One must conclude that there exists no space-time distortion of any kind.
I do not know, what it means.
He is referring specifically to Einstein’s theory of relativity and means as he continues in that paragraph:
“Unless we accept the absurd solution that the distance between N.Y. to S.F. is smaller than the distance between S.F. and N.Y., we have to accept that in a moving frame, the velocity of light is different in each direction. As mentioned above, this difference is even programmed in the GPS computer in order to get the correct Global Positioning. This proves that the experimental velocity of light with respect to a moving observer is c±v.”
http://www.newtonphysics.on.ca/illusion/index.html
An other fact, that spacetime is an element in nature, is the fact that the linearity of spacetime getting nonlinear in gravitational fields as we all know from the Mercury trace, which is different to the linear Kepler relation.
Einstein’s spacetime is nonsense, what he was good at was to use traditional physics to claim this proved his, as Bart has shown, this is still being done with the claims for the GPS system.
Here’s Marmet’s look at the perihelion of Mercury. http://www.newtonphysics.on.ca/mercury/index.html
“Abstract.
Using Einstein’s general relativity, it is generally believed that space and time distortions are absolutely required to explain the advance of the perihelion of Mercury. This is untrue. The advance of the perihelion of Mercury was first calculated in 1898 by Paul Gerber (1A). We show here that this phenomenon can be fully explained using Newton’s physics and mass-energy conservation, without any relativity principle. Without having to introduce any new physics, we arrive to the same equation as predicted by Einstein. Therefore, the relativity principles are useless.”
Do you see the trick here?

Sorry.
This link http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/05/big-jumps-in-september-solar-activity-metrics/#comment-759841 takes you directly to my posted comment.

vukcevic says:
April 16, 2012 at 1:32 am
Thanks for your help, even if Dr. Svalgaard agreed with some of my ideas it would not change anything.
The problem with your polar field correlation is that it [as I said] conflicts with observations. Your formula predicts that the polar fields do not reverse signs in in the cycle with minimum in 2031 and in 1911:
http://www.leif.org/research/Vuk-polar-fields-13.png
We don’t know about 2031 yet, but we do know that in 1911 the polar fields changed sign as usual. How do we know this: there is something called the 22-year cycle in geomagnetic activity that depends critically on the sign of the polar fields. The explanation of this can be found here http://www.leif.org/research/suipr699.pdf [section 9]. We can follow that effect back to the 1840s and see that the cycle continues unbroken, hence that the polar fields behaved as usual, also in 1911.
tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 12:00 am
“The paper by Wolff and Patrone narrates one of those fairy tales that has not gripped me sufficiently to read beyond the first few pages.”
Because the error occurs in the very first few pages, so no need to continue.
The embarrassment belongs to Leif for touting Gough’s comment as a rebuttal, not to the reviewers of Wolff and Patrone’s paper for accepting it.
The embarrassment belongs to Wolff and Patrone. As Gough says
“What they should do is go back to the original publications of Rayleigh and Chandrasekhar and try to understand them. If they succeed, and if they are honest, they would then withdraw the paper.”
Gough’s comment was not meant as a rebuttal, but as an explanation of why it is not worthwhile to write a formal rebuttal [which you and other faithful would not accept anyway].

Myrrh says:
April 16, 2012 at 1:02 am
Volker Doormann says:
April 15, 2012 at 11:33 pm
Paul Marmet
“One must conclude that there exists no space-time distortion of any kind.
I do not know, what it means.
He is referring specifically to Einstein’s theory of relativity and means as he continues in that paragraph:
“Unless we accept the absurd solution that the distance between N.Y. to S.F. is smaller than the distance between S.F. and N.Y., we have to accept that in a moving frame, the velocity of light is different in each direction. As mentioned above, this difference is even programmed in the GPS computer in order to get the correct Global Positioning. This proves that the experimental velocity of light with respect to a moving observer is c±v.”
No. I have worked some years (1967-1970) on a compass. If you propagate light in a fiber ring in both directions on a non rotating place the frequencies both are identical on the detector. If there is any rotation on a ship, a rotating planet or an aircraft, both frequencies are different because of a Doppler effect.
No one ever has given a proof for a velocity of any kind.
“An other fact, that spacetime is an element in nature, is the fact that the linearity of spacetime getting nonlinear in gravitational fields as we all know from the Mercury trace, which is different to the linear Kepler relation.”
Einstein’s spacetime is nonsense
EOD because of ignore my arguments + OT.
V.

Leif says of Gough’s ‘criticism’ of Wolff & Patrone 2010:
Because the error occurs in the very first few pages, so no need to continue.
Well, you keep saying this, but argument by assertion doesn’t carry any weight, and a reviewer would quite rightly reject it.
vukcevic says:
April 16, 2012 at 2:25 am
650,000 Amps …. That is some turkey
Someone’s goose is cooked, I agree. 😉

vukcevic says:
April 16, 2012 at 2:25 am
Somewhere up the thread Dr.S mentions ‘one electric turkey/sec’
Wrong. I was talking about the mass of the solar wind impacting. No electricity here. The solar wind is electrically neutral as Lindeman showed back in 1919 http://www.leif.org/EOS/Lindemann-1919.pdf
“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. “We believe that solar wind particles flow in along these ropes, providing energy for geomagnetic storms”. 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.”
They are way behind. This was calculated by me back in 1973 http://www.leif.org/research/Geomagnetic-Response-to-Solar-Wind.pdf “Therefore the total substorm energy dissipation amounts to 5 x 10^14 Joule corresponding to an earthquake of magnitude 6.7 on the Richter scale”. A 5.5 quake only releases 10^13 Joule [or 50 times less] so Angelopoulos needs to learn a bit too. Anyway, the point is that the Earth and other magnetospheres extract only about one percent of the energy of the solar wind impinging on them so do not disturb the solar wind significantly and any disturbance cannot travel upwind. I mentioned that the interaction with the magnetosphere concentrates the extremely weak solar wind into a small area [the auroral zone], so you can get relatively large local effects, enough to melt transformers and disrupt power lines. But melted transformers do not control the solar cycle.

Steven Mosher [April 15, 2012 at 1:32 pm]

Steve, you made a lot of self-evident and obvious good sense in this comment with one gigantic exception:

“If mann or jones wrote some of the crap you see from the barycenter crew, they’d be laughed out of the room.”

You must know that this proposition isn’t even remotely true.. Mann, Jones, Trenberth along with their AGW clergy of Ehrlich, Hansen, McKibben, Algore, Suzuki (… ad nauseum) would never be laughed out of the room. Their ‘side’ has already far, far exceeded any of these ‘out there’ pet theories and opinions about gravity wells and electric suns from ‘skeptics’ that get you so agitated. I mean, certainly after the obvious whitewashes of the unbelievable admitted thwarting and obstruction of FOI requests you cannot really believe what you wrote!
Even if Mann’s UVA or PSU emails were found to contain Mark Foley like bad behavior with young boys he would still be A-Okay with all of the eco-Kooks and .99% of the major media as well as with Scientific journals and public pseudo-Science rags like Nature and Scientific American.

Peter Hodges said:
Also, it seems to me that if the combined action of the planets can pull the entire sun
around the solar system barycenter, then the combined action of the planets could also pull around a little surface material in tidal effects.
Gross misunderstanding of physics.
The barycenter has 0 mass. The gravitational force goes F=constant*M1*M2/r**2.
M1, the sun, M2 the barycenter. F=0
There is no force exerted according to classical mechanics.
The motion of the barycenter that so fascinates people weak on physics is just like a planetarium, like a clock keeping time where the gears are the sun and planets. Any correlation with a physical measurement cannot be causal, because there is no force to cause effects.
Observations are full of correlations, but correlation is not causation , it is just a datum to be examined in order to find the true cause.
An example by what I mean that the motion of the barycenter is just like a clock hand: Take a clock where you are, and a clock in the north pole, and note the times. They are higly correlated but are not causing each other; the true cause being that the gears have been calibrated to have this correlation.
Now the motion of the barycenter, as the result of the chaotic dance of the solar system, has a lot of peaks and valleys that can give a lot of frequencies when analysed. The sun also has a
lot of peaks and valleys in its output. Similar periods can by nursed out. This does not mean that the correlation has a cause. It is just a clock coincidence unless the dynamics are demonstrated.

Just to add to the pot: In astrophysics there is an understanding that in the early evolution of stars angular momentum is transferred to the stellar disc via the magnetic field. Can anyone explain to me how the magnetic field transfers angular momentum?
I am impressed by the correlations of the torque feedback to both sunspot and climate cycles…and not at all impressed by the ansence of mechanism arguments..considering the history of scientific discovery of mechanisms whereby elucidation of mechanims followed observation. So, where tidal forces are apparently too weak, and stochastic resonances under-studied, I would suspect another mechanism as yet unknown that correlates with the forces of torque.
Given the power of the solar wind to impact the electric body of the Earth (through magnetic storms) – a power amplified by the angle of the fields as they interact, could not reverse currents have similar pulses and powers?
Incidently – Leif: the law of the conservation of matter and energy would lead me to infer that as no significant amount of energy/matter leaves the heliosphere (held in by the galactic wind pressure), yet there appears not to be a build-up at the boundary, logic would infer that it is cycled back into the Sun (as Alfven thought). I presume that the countercurrent back to the Sun could flow along the sheer lines of the magnetic tubes….even at 1/10th their speed. Alfven calculated the electron flux back to the Sun….the return circuit, and thought it powerful enough to cause the sudden rise from 10,000 to several million degrees C of the photosphere (now thought due to magentic fields heating the surface – but heck, as a generalist I am aware these things come in fashions as paradigms shift and change).
Finally….often left out of everyone’s equations are voltage shocks. Anyone studying these? When Svensmark wanted to clear his experimental chambers of seeded cloud particles, he applied a voltage shock. The transparency of the atmosphere has a large effect on climate – most particularly, the rate of ocean surface heating and cooling. Global warming is not global…it is regional, where accummulated ocean heat stores (gyres) are dissipated by prevailing winds and low pressure vortices (the vortices track the jetstream).
These are all mechanisms that are not favoured by detailed studies….of heat accumulation in gyres, of heat transfer to land, or rates of transfer, and the effects of transparency….and virtually nothing on atmospheric voltage variations and ‘shocks’ and their spatial distribution.
So – many mysteries still to be resolved to understand both solar magnetic cycles and terrestrial climate cycles, where the correlations are very suggestive of a linking mechanism. What is required is a combination of open minds, scientific scepticism and analytical skill married to a wilingness to actually investigate (along with some time and/or money)!

anna v says:
April 16, 2012 at 4:24 am
Peter Hodges said:
Also, it seems to me that if the combined action of the planets can pull the entire sun
around the solar system barycenter, then the combined action of the planets could also pull around a little surface material in tidal effects.
Gross misunderstanding of physics.
The barycenter has 0 mass. The gravitational force goes F=constant*M1*M2/r**2.
M1, the sun, M2 the barycenter. F=0
There is no force exerted according to classical mechanics.
Gross misunderstanding of Peter Hodges.
He said the sun was pulled around the barycentre by “the combined action of the planets”
Which is the correct physics.
Now the motion of the barycenter, as the result of the chaotic dance of the solar system, has a lot of peaks and valleys that can give a lot of frequencies when analysed. The sun also has a
lot of peaks and valleys in its output. Similar periods can by nursed out. This does not mean that the correlation has a cause. It is just a clock coincidence unless the dynamics are demonstrated.
Like this:
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/rotation-solar-windspeed-adjusted.png
That’s Jupiter and Earth and a little bit of Venus (weak magnetosphere) interacting along the Parker Spiral in relation to the timings of the solar cycles. The amplitudes maybe have more to do with the action of the outer big four gas giants via the Wolff-Patrone mechanism for the general curve, modulated by the effect outlined by Landsche..t in my comment above.
So we’d be talking about a combination of electro-magnetic, gravitational in combination with solar convection, non-linear boundary effects via Paul Westhaver’s infinitesimal force starting major fluid disturbance via the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability and maybe a little bit of tidal effects too.
Simple it ain’t, but we’re working on it before we’re ready to make any claims, because we’re not ‘The Faithful’ as Leif likes to insultingly characterise us, but interested and productive thinkers working on this topic, unlike the naysayers.

Leif Svalgaard says, April 15, 2012 at 8:22 pm

Here is the modern theory of the solar cycle: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1008.2432v2.pdf

All well and good but where does the ‘random kick’ come from that brings it back out of a grand minima?

tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 5:33 am
Gross misunderstanding of Peter Hodges.
He said the sun was pulled around the barycentre by “the combined action of the planets”
Which is the correct physics.
Even this interpretation is wrong. The sun is a huge gravitational well and is pulling the planets in their dance around it; you are putting the cart before the horse. If one takes the center of mass of all the planets, when to first order one could legally add the planetary mass and look at it like a satellite of the sun, it will be going around the sun like a fly around honey. The sun is pulling the planets and not the other way around. It is as if you said that the moon pulls the earth around it, where what it does at most is create the tides; and we know that the tides on the sun due to the planetary pull are just a few milimeters or so.

izen says, April 16, 2012 at 5:39 am

“… is rooted in an ideological/emotional adherence to an ‘Anything but CO2′ belief.”
“… is surely more to do with those rejecting the role of CO2 finding solace in any possible alternative, however unlikely, or just plain incomprehensible, as a[sic] amelioration of their cognitive dissonance.”

Psycho babble about CO2 ‘belief’ in the face of the giant heat pump with a gigantic heat sink under it in which we live that seems to by-pass most of the claimed effect of the 5 – 2 = 2 hypothesis has no place in this discussion. In case you missed it, we’re talking about the origin and timing of the of the solar cycle; not Gaia Worship Disorder (GWD).

anna v says:
April 16, 2012 at 6:01 am
The sun is a huge gravitational well and is pulling the planets in their dance around it
Not a great example of solar system dynamics displayed in your post anna. There is absolutely no doubt re the movement of the Sun around the SSB is a direct result of of the big 4 planet positions even though their combined mass is not superior, but yes once that movement is enacted the planets have no choice in following their gravitational host.

anna v says:
April 16, 2012 at 6:01 am
tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 5:33 am
Gross misunderstanding of Peter Hodges.
He said the sun was pulled around the barycentre by “the combined action of the planets”
Which is the correct physics.
Even this interpretation is wrong. The sun is a huge gravitational well and is pulling the planets in their dance around it; you are putting the cart before the horse. If one takes the center of mass of all the planets,
No, by definition, the Solar System Barycentre is the centre of mass of all the planets, AND THE SUN.
Exoplanets orbiting other stars are identified by the fact that the make the stars they are in orbit around wobble. It is the wobbling that is observed, not the planets. The existence, number, and mass, and approximate orbital distances are inferred from the wobble.
Our star is no different, “because the combined action of the planets” is pulling the Sun just as much as the Sun is pulling the planets, the Sun has to move wrt the Barycentre as the mass distribution changes. And move it does, by a maximum of around 2.2 solar diameters over a decade or so. Ivanka Charvatova tells us it averages around 50kmh.
Because the Sun is not a rigid body all the way through, there is both elastic and plastic deformation as it responds to the differential tidal forces it is subjected to, as it heaves around the SSB in a complex dance which looks like a clover leaf for around 50 years out of 180, and quite chaotically the rest of the time. There is a correlation between the periods of smooth, three leaf clover type motion, and shortened, more active solar cycles. In the chaotic periods, it tends to have smaller amplitude, longer solar cycles. These are Ivanka Charvatova’s EMPIRICAL, PEER REVIEWED OBSERVATIONS. Her diagrams appear in one of the standard US college physics textbooks. I suggest you read it.

anna v says:
April 16, 2012 at 6:01 am
“and we know that the tides on the sun due to the planetary pull are just a few milimeters or so.”
“But” covers millions of square kilometers. Just a bit of mass there.

tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 5:11 am
“Anyway, the point is that the Earth and other magnetospheres extract only about one percent of the energy of the solar wind impinging on them so do not disturb the solar wind significantly”
And solar variation in TSI terms is maybe 0.1 to 0.3% on the centennial scale. And the Earth’s average surface temperature variation is maybe around 0.5% from the little ice age to now.
I’m not making any claim for causation here, just comparing the magnitude of some pertinent figures.
but you have no concept of proportions. What is important is also how much of the sky seen from the sun these magnetospheres take up compared to the rest. For the biggest one [Jupiter’s] the ‘target’ area is only 1/50,000 of the sky so the one per cent has to be divided by 50,000 for comparisons.
Peter Taylor says:
April 16, 2012 at 5:14 am
Can anyone explain to me how the magnetic field transfers angular momentum?
Basically because the field is frozen into the matter, so if matter [stellar wind] is ejected from the star to a larger distance, but forced to rotate with the same speed as the star [because of the frozen-in condition], the angular momentum of that matter increases [and that of the star decreases to conserve the total].
Given the power of the solar wind to impact the electric body of the Earth (through magnetic storms) – a power amplified by the angle of the fields as they interact, could not reverse currents have similar pulses and powers?
Any magnetic/electric changes cannot propagate upstream in the solar wind, because such disturbances move with the so-called Alfven speed [because the wind is a plasma] which is ten times slower [at the Earth] than the speed by which the plasma is moving away from the Sun.
the law of the conservation of matter and energy would lead me to infer that as no significant amount of energy/matter leaves the heliosphere
The conservation law is for a closed system, which the heliosphere is not. There is no return flow over the poles. We have had a spacecraft fly over the poles and it found at all time an outward flow [actually twice as fast as the latitude of the Earth].
Finally….often left out of everyone’s equations are voltage shocks.
There are lots of shocks in the solar wind, but they are not ‘voltage shocks’.
What is required is a combination of open minds, scientific scepticism and analytical skill married to a wilingness to actually investigate (along with some time and/or money)
Contrary to common beliefs [at least on the blog] scientists actually have these qualities [with the possible exception of the money], but they are impoverished ‘weapons’ against people who KNOW their cyclomania [but do not know basic physics].
tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 5:33 am
the Wolff-Patrone mechanism for the general curve
The W&P effect [as I have said before] does not operate in a real star [read the comment].

tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 6:59 am
These are Ivanka Charvatova’s EMPIRICAL, PEER REVIEWED OBSERVATIONS. Her diagrams appear in one of the standard US college physics textbooks. I suggest you read it.
Charvatova’s observations are perhaps the most pure amongst the planetary pioneers, but her observations are over very long time periods and only gives us a very vague perspective over many decades. To drill down further we need to understand what planetary positions control the disordered orbit…. which she was not aware of. Charvatova could roughly gauge an overall scale of solar downturn over an epoch but did not have the info to determine solar output down to the solar cycle. That information is now available along with the strength of the downturn at the solar cycle level.

vukcevic says:
April 16, 2012 at 7:01 am
you say it can only be uni-directional, I think it is likely to be a bi-directional link, the NASA is for time being silent.
I have explained many times why it is not bi-directional. NASA is silent because the one-way street is not a research issue, but rather a fact [you also don’t see NASA trumpet that they have established that the Earth is not flat].
David Ball says:
April 16, 2012 at 7:04 am
“and we know that the tides on the sun due to the planetary pull are just a few milimeters or so.”
“But” covers millions of square kilometers. Just a bit of mass there.
You have to compare with the motions already going on: Millions of Texas-sized plasma cells move up and down at 500 meters/second.

http://search.orange.co.uk/all?q=Wobbling+stars&brand=ouk&tab=web&p=searchbox&pt=newhptest_hp4&segment=4&home=fal
It seems pretty clear that the movements of stars are affected by the planets around them. Is our sun unique in that NOT being the case ?
“Thus, using the Doppler technique to analyze light from about 300 stars similar to the sun–all within 50 light-years of Earth–astronomers have turned up eight planets similar in size and mass to Jupiter and Saturn.”

To me, this is an excellent thread. Really gets the intellectual “juices” flowing. Perhaps someone will trigger an idea that will knock a giant piece of fruit off the tree of knowledge and advance the science that wee little bit. Nothing personal at my end. Grateful to all. Especially our host and mods.

Leif says:
tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 5:33 am
the Wolff-Patrone mechanism for the general curve
The W&P effect [as I have said before] does not operate in a real star [read the comment].
More argument by assertion.
The comment by Gough is worthless because he didn’t read the full paper. Now, you claim that he can legitimately dismiss it from the first three pages, but you haven’t backed up the claim with any falsifiable argument.

tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 8:01 am
“The W&P effect [as I have said before] does not operate in a real star [read the comment].
More argument by assertion.
The comment by Gough is worthless because he didn’t read the full paper. Now, you claim that he can legitimately dismiss it from the first three pages, but you haven’t backed up the claim with any falsifiable argument.
Your argument is by the same token worthless as you didn’t bother to try to understand the whole comment. But I agree with Gough that the first few pages are enough, because all the rest hangs on the premises set up in the beginning [in particular equation (2)]. As these are false, the rest is not valid and doesn’t have to be rebutted in detail.

LazyTeenager says:
April 16, 2012 at 7:23 am
ffect”
cuibono1969 on April 15, 2012 at 11:17 am said:
Ah, yes, The Jupiter Effect, 1982. Yet another catastrophe that didn’t quite work out.
———–
Never fell for the Jupiter Effect.
The book “The Jupiter Effect” was a piece of tripe sold to the gullible to make the authors a fast buck. It has nothing to do with the ongoing research of orbital relationships and solar activity undertaken by astrophysics Phd’s and interested engineers, scholars and laymen.
REPLY: but it does share one characteristic, lack of posited gravitational effects – Anthony

Leif Svalgaard says:
April 16, 2012 at 8:10 am
I agree with Gough that the first few pages are enough, because all the rest hangs on the premises set up in the beginning [in particular equation (2)].
We’ve been here before, and you didn’t specify what it was about equation (2) that you thought was wrong. So until you do, and show how that falsifies the paper, your assertion that the Wolff and Patrone mechanism isn’t viable is just that, a bare assertion. As such it contains no falsifiable content, and would quite rightly be rejected by a reviewer.
Come on Leif, you’ve been through the mill and know the drill.

vukcevic says:
April 16, 2012 at 8:27 am
Please every one notice: not few electrons bobbing around but let’s have it straight and to remember for the future reference: …AND CARRY A TOTAL AXIAL CURRENT (IT ) OF ABOUT A BILLION AMPS.
Any twisted magnetic structure carries a current. And if you had been honest in your quote you should have noted that the ropes “have axial current densities of about 2µA/km2” that is 0.000002 amp per square kilometer, an exceedingly weak current density and a very minute turkey. Something to keep in mind for future reference. But in any event [and that is the point]: any change in the magnetic structure and hence the current must take place at the Alfven speed and so cannot propagate upstream as the structure is moving away from the sun ten times faster.

tallbloke has posted several times since I asked the question 2 times.
“Geoff wants to claim the glory to himself and in the memory of the late Carl Smith”
In a science blog there should be consequences for not answering a question. This seems to be a recurrent problem that is not addressed by tallbloke.

anna v says:
April 16, 2012 at 8:27 am
tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 6:59 am
Exoplanets orbiting other stars are identified by the fact that the make the stars they are in orbit around wobble. It is the wobbling that is observed, not the planets. The existence, number, and mass, and approximate orbital distances are inferred from the wobble.
In order to study gravitational effects, you need your point of reference to have mass. If mass=0, the dynamic effect of that point is 0.
Incorrect, you can choose any point you like. If you choose an inappropriate one, the calcs get more complicated, but are still transformable.
It is useless for studying internal dynamics because there is no meaning to assign to it the mass of the total solar system ( which is the only physically correct interpretation) and try to see what it does to the sun!!!
It doesn’t do anything to the Sun. It represents a sum of forces from the planets, which is a useful shorthand for some purposes. The planets are what do things to the Sun, not the barycentre. They force it to gyrate in a complex motion between the continuously redistributing masses that are the orbiting planets. And if you sum the forces, you find that the Sun gyrates around the centre of mass of the entire system.
I am talking about the planets taken altogether, then the center of mass of the planets goes around the sun like a satellite . That center of mass can be assigned the mass of all the planets to first order ( because the system has structure corrections may be necessary.), like the moon around the earth. There is dynamics there, but nothing to do with the total barycenter except a mathematical correlation.( As there is correlation with the epicycles in the geocentric system but the epicycles have no meaning as gravitational components).
No. Epicycles were heuristic approximations. The motion of the Sun relative to the centre of the mass of the entire system is real motion, and precisely calculable. Whether you want to calculate from the Sun as a fixed point or the barycentre is your choice. The same relative motion will be derived whichever way you do it. But the barycentre imparts no forces, the separate masses in motion impart the forces. The barycentre is just a convenient (and real as you see the solar system from outside) locus.
What is observed as wobble in a star , is the unbalanced system from which wobble the total center of mass can be estimated. If the planets were invisible, our sun would wobble against the stars and we would be able to find the barycenter of the solar system by the wobble. That is dynamics, the wobble against fixed stars, due to the masses of the planets . To assign dynamics to the barycenter is funny.
Straw man. We are assigning the dynamics to the planets and Sun, and the barycentre is a useful reference point which derives from the sum of the force vectors.

Ulric Lyons says:
April 16, 2012 at 8:45 am
And so what if it is the “tidal position”, I don`t think it has anything to do with tides IMO.
Ok…if it is nothing to do with tides…what is your mechanism?

tallbloke :
April 16, 2012 at 8:48 am
It is futile arguing on this since you do not seem to understand the difference between dynamics and mathematical devices.
The usefulness of the barycenter comes only when one studies the solar system from outside, not internally. Internally it is just a useful mathematical point correlated with the real dynamics. It certainly does not make the sun woble. If a barycenter had any effect the earth, whose barycenter with the moon races 800 km inside the mantle 24 hours a day would be continually beaten up, like an egg beater. Instead the dynamics of the moon earth system just give tides which are well understood dynamically. The equivalent tides on the sun are of the order of milimeters or so.

anna v says:
April 16, 2012 at 9:14 am
Internally it is just a useful mathematical point correlated with the real dynamics. It certainly does not make the sun woble.
Time to go back to school anna.

Crispin in Johannesburg says:
April 16, 2012 at 9:13 am
The quote from Landscheidt on the position of the barycentre at the surface of the sun for extended periods was excellent.
Can you elaborate on this quote? It can be taken out of context as tallbloke is about to appreciate.

When it rains it pours [correcting the typo]: With a radius of 100 Jupiter radii [71500 km] the surface on which the solar wind impacts is pi*(100*71500)^2 = 1.6*10^14 square km.

Myrrh says:
April 16, 2012 at 12:29 am
“Nope. It uses Sagnac…”
The Sagnac delay is a relativistic effect. In classical theory, the light pulse going in the direction of the rotation would be traveling at a speed c plus the velocity of the emitter, and vice versa for the opposing pulse. Both pulses would arrive at the detector at the same time. The theory of relativity, however, says both light pulses will travel at the same speed c. Thus, one has a longer path to travel, and one a shorter, at the same velocity, so there is a difference in time of arrival at the detector.
Moreover, it is just on of several terms which must be corrected in GPS signals according to relativistic theory. These include first order corrections for the GPS satellite velocity and the Earth’s gravitational field, as well as the receiver velocity and height above the geoid.
anna v says:
April 16, 2012 at 6:01 am
“The sun is pulling the planets and not the other way around. It is as if you said that the moon pulls the earth around it, where what it does at most is create the tides; and we know that the tides on the sun due to the planetary pull are just a few milimeters or so.”
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Sun pulls on the planets, and the planets pull on the Sun. If you calculate the total angular momentum relative to the barycenter, it is constant.
tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 6:59 am
“Because the Sun is not a rigid body all the way through, there is both elastic and plastic deformation as it responds to the differential tidal forces it is subjected to, as it heaves around the SSB in a complex dance which looks like a clover leaf for around 50 years out of 180, and quite chaotically the rest of the time.”
It does not “heave” about the SSB. I think the conceptual problem here is elucidated by the post below, so let’s jump there.
Dr. Deanster says:
April 16, 2012 at 7:53 am
“Further, as you noted, the Sun pulls the planets, but as anyone knows who has put a ball on a rope, any variation in the speed of the sun’s orbit will have an effect on the forces exerted.”
But, gravity is special. It is not like heavng a ball at the end of a rope. When you do that, the rope pulls at a specific point, and stresses are created in the material because they are not attached to to rope, but only to the rest of the ball. Gravity acts like a bundle of ropes attached to every single particle of the ball. Insomuch as the gravitational field is uniform, every particle experiences the same tug. So, there is no stress induced except to the extent that the gravitational field is not uniform, i.e., the tidal forces.
Movement relative to the SSB from gravitational forces does not stress the Sun like a ball being twirled at the end of a rope – more like a ball being twirled encased in a finely woven net constraining every particle. Where there is no relative stress, there is no effect on the body.

rgbatduke says:
April 16, 2012 at 9:34 am
Since those couplings are the very forces that establish the patterns over long time scales, it might well be the case that small modulations in the planetary torque(s) suffice to trigger secular changes in those patterns.
Over millions or more years that may happen. The issue is if it happens on time scales of centuries and shorter.

Geoff Sharp says: April 16, 2012 at 9:00 am
“Ok…if it is nothing to do with tides…what is your mechanism?”
The mechanism is linked to the tides as I already proved in my previous paper by showing that by considering their frequencies and phases + the dynamo cycle is is possible toreconstruct all known solar decadal, multidacadal, secular and millennial patterns.
N. 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.” Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics in press (2012).
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/Scafetta_JStides.pdf
About the energetic calculations, they just need to be done correctly by taking into account the right physics. That is all.
The argument that the influence of planetary attractions on the solar tachocline is small as claimed by Dirk K. Callebaut, Cornelis de Jager, Silvia Duhau, simply means that the proposed mechanism is not the right way to do the calculations.
And similar arguments were already known since the 19th century. The tides from the planets are small: so what? It is well known! If they were big, there would be no debate!
In science, when people try to understand a physical phenomenon in any field it is possible to do the calculations or the experiments in an infinity of wrong ways and do not find the right result!
Where is the great news!
Callebaut et al. can write 300,000 papers by using the same logic: possible titles are the following:
paper #2: the tides are small at 2 Km above the tachocline;
paper #3, the tides are small at 3 Km above the tachocline;
paper #4: the tides are small at 4 Km above the tachocline;
paper #5, the tides are small at 5 Km above the tachocline;
….
….
…..
paper #300,000, the tides are small at 300,000 Km above the tachocline, that is at the solar surface.
Never mind that in my paper about the auroras I calculated the tides at the Earth’s orbit and they were several hundred of kilometers wide!
In the 19th century people did not know about the physical mechanism (nuclear fusion) that was causing the sun to shine. People proposed the most extravagant theories that were found to be unsatisfactory. However, nobody concluded that because the luminosity mechanism was still unknown, the sun was not shining!
The issue is what is the right way to do the calculations because the empirical findings are clear!
Wait and see 🙂

tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 3:06 am
I am still waiting for an answer for the question posed to tallbloke many hours ago and he has replied to other comments in the interim.
Skimming papers and picking comments out of context is not a good look. Theodore makes it very clear in all his papers that the PTC event (what you think is a solar downturn) is a mechanism for changing phase. ie phase reversal. Show me in one of his papers where the PTC event is linked with grand minima. I find it lame we are even discussing this issue, you have no idea. Do you understand what the PTC event is?
It seems as though tallbloke can wax on imposing his views, but when asked a solid question here he ignores, and if posed on his own website the question is “moderated” and does not appear.
WUWT?