Guest essay by David Archibald
The Maunder Minimum was not completely devoid of sunspots, as shown by the following graphic using data from SIDC. Will global warming be attenuated due to our current low solar activity?
In a comment on a previous post, a Mr B. Fagan notes that the authors of the solar physics paper quoted say “As a consequence, the increase of global warming will be slightly attenuated until 2100 A.D. However, the subsequent increase in solar activity will further enhance the global warming.”
He plaintively asks why the conclusion that global warming will overwhelm whatever the Sun might do is ignored.
Well, the reason it is ignored is because all solar physics papers that touch on climate have the same sort of wording, for exactly the same reason. For example, here’s a Usoskin et al. paper in which at the end of the abstract they say “Although the rarity of the current episode of high average sunspot numbers may indicate that the Sun has contributed to the unusual climate change during the twentieth century, we point out that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades.” It is like reading Pravda in Soviet times. You ignore the Party line and read between the lines.
The price of getting published in solar physics is abjuring any role for the Sun in climate. Solar physicists will start giving that up over the next couple of years with the sharp step down in temperature that is underway because otherwise they will run reputational risk for ignoring the obvious. In the meantime they stoically bear the humiliation of having to utter these inanities.
What if you are a normal climate scientist, doing the usual modelling and so on, and you want to get the message out about the effects of the cold climate coming? Well, that requires some mental gymnastics. But it has been done. Professor John Kutzbach of the University of Wisconsin shows how. In the CIA climate report of 1974 predicting severe cooling and a return to the climate of the neo-arboreal era (1600-1850), he is mentioned on page 24. Forty years later, Professor Kutzbach is still at the University of Wisconsin and still warning of cooling. In 2010, he was the co-author of a paper which investigated the effect of a 3.1°C temperature decline on plant productivity. The basis of the 3.1°C assumption was the low carbon dioxide levels of the glacial periods.
Saying the magic words “The Sun can’t have caused the warming” is enough to get most solar physicists published. Others have to recant in public if their findings proved to be inconvenient. For example, in 2011 Dr Richard Altrock published a paper in which he said that, based on observations of the green coronal emissions of the Sun, Solar Cycle 24 was 40% slower than the average of the previous two cycles. This would have a significant effect on climate through Friis-Christensen and Lassen theory. That was followed in 2012 by a paper in which he said that some data had been overlooked in the 2011 paper and that Solar Cycle 24 was back to normal. He hasn’t published his diagram again since.
As far as I can tell, the first solar physicists to suggest that we are heading into a Maunder Minimum were Schatten and Tobiska in 2003. From their abstract,” The surprising result of these long-range predictions is a rapid decline in solar activity, starting with cycle #24. If this trend continues, we may see the Sun heading towards a “Maunder” type of solar activity minimum – an extensive period of reduced levels of solar activity.”
Others on their own efforts have subsequently attempted to untangle the solar record and derive a prediction from it. Thus Steinhilber and Beer, and from the tree rings, Libby and Pandolfi and the Finnish foresters. All are pointing down, steeply down from now. By the time of the CIA climate report in 1974, there was still a living memory of the colder years of the early 20th century, and an appreciation that humanity was in a special time of warmth and abundance. Now forty years on, the cold years that preceded the current warmth are not even a distant memory. Most think that this is the new normal.
Dikpati and Hathaway, both of NASA, in 2006 had predictions of Solar Cycle 24 amplitude of 190 and 170 respectively. In their press release, NASA said that,”Dikpati’s prediction is unprecedented.” It was also terribly wrong, possibly unprecedentedly so. Significantly, no solar physicist is now predicting a return to the high levels of activity of the second half of the 20th century. Schatten and Tobiska’s prediction of a Maunder level of activity stands, is on track, and has no competition. Everyone is well advised to plan accordingly.
David Archibald, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of Twilight of Abundance (Regnery, 2014).
In science, the quality of one’s predictive track record is, I suggest, the best objective measure of one’s competence.
The IPCC has NO successful predictive track record – and hence no demonstrable competence.
In 2002 I was asked by my Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (“APEGA”) to debate in writing the issue of catastrophic humanmade global warming and the proposed Kyoto Protocol.
[PEGG debate, reprinted at their request by several professional journals, the Globe and Mail and la Presse in translation, by Baliunas, Patterson and MacRae]
http://www.apegga.org/Members/Publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
We knew with confidence based on the evidence that global warming alarmism was technically false, extremist and wasteful.
We clearly stated in our 2002 debate:
On global warming:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
On green energy:
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
On real pollution:
“Kyoto will actually hurt the global environment – it will cause energy-intensive industries to move to exempted developing countries that do not control even the worst forms of pollution.”
On squandering resources:
“Kyoto wastes enormous resources that are urgently needed to solve real environmental and social problems that exist today. For example, the money spent on Kyoto in one year would provide clean drinking water and sanitation for all the people of the developing world in perpetuity.”
I suggest that our four above statements are now demonstrably correct, within a high degree of confidence.
I suggest that we, and a few others like us, have been essentially correct in our predictions to date.
I also wrote in an article in the Calgary Herald published on September 1, 2002, based in part on a phone conversation with Paleoclimatologist Dr. Tim Patterson:
On global cooling:
“If (as I believe) solar activity is the main driver of surface temperature rather than CO2, we should begin the next cooling period by 2020 to 2030.”
When I wrote this in 2002, SC 24 was predicted to be strong, and we now know it is quite weak.
I still think my (our) 2002 global cooling prediction will materialize, although I wonder if this cooling will start a bit sooner than 2020. Maybe this cooling has already started.
There is just not adequate understanding as the processes are so complex, so I listen to what is said. I would not be surprised to see the end of the Holocene, but I would consider the position that it is definitely in progress or about to happen to be reading bones cast on a rock. However, AGW consensus in my mind is in the same category as flat Earthers – they had their day in the sun and will soon find their fellow believers falling away into the shadows. No need to rub their noses in it. Higher levels of CO2 are a gardener’s blessing. Best to all, stay kind and generous.
PS Don’t be surprised to hear of dark horse economic fusion competitive to coal in real terms not Popular Science Magazine fantasy, this year. General Fusion Inc is just one of many (forget ITER and NIF boondoggles, nice complete career science projects though). Keep looking up.
Tom in Florida says: May 18, 2014 at 4:23 am “But David, you know who got it right based on his understanding of how the sun works. Why no mention of him?”
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Well then Tom, you put his name there so we can research it. I hate mystery.
Buy Natural Gas
With solar activity trending downwards for the last 50 years:
http://www.sidc.be/silso/monthlyhemisphericplot
and not a hint of the Great Cooling we have been promised, rumours are rife among the Villagers that we’re in a “Great Global Cooling Swindle” situation. It was not in fact the Sun wot done it, aided and abetted by Cosmic Rays, but the Sun wot done it by warming up the Pacific to produce El Niño’s driving the last 50 years warming. We are presently undergoing intensive coaching, by members of The Monastery of Climate Truth, to expect, not CSGC in the near future, but in fact a rise in global temperature. Whether this is simply hedging or genuinely expected, is not for us to know, but us ordinary Villagers are entering a time of great testing with regards our Faith.
If there is warming in the next few years, this will at least have the advantage of sparing us the monotonous monthly mockery of Monkton’s maladroit mallard – the so called 17 year + pause.
I think there is also the possibility of cold temperatures like during the MAUNDER MINIMUM but due to causes other than the sun Just look at the temperature drops in Canada during the past winter.
Atlantic Canada has cooled 4C since 2010 (7.2 F)
Great Lakes and St Lawrence valley cooled 5.6 C since 2012 ( 10F)
Northern Ontario and Quebec has cooled 6.9 C since 2010 (12.4F)
Northern western forests cooled 6.8 C since 2012 (12.2 F)
Prairies cooled 8.0 C since 2012 ( 14.4F)
Canada’s National winter temperature cooled 4.5 C since 2010 ( 8.1 F)
Extended periods where the polar vortex wanders further south can quickly drop the temperatures and very dramatically . There was an scary similarity between the pattern of extreme cold temperatures right across Canada ( as low as -50C in some parts of the Prairies) and the polar ice sheet( Laurentide ice sheet) that covered Canada during the last glaciation period . Northern Ontario and Quebec had the 6 th coldest winter in 67 years . Are we on the cusp of the period between the glaciation and inter-glaciation eras? Instead of worrying about global warming only we should also consider other risks which may dwarf global warming.
The Maunder Sunspots were sparse, large, and primarily Southern Hemispheric. I thing the hemispheric asymmetry is a huge clue. I think the Livingston and Penn Effect explains ‘sparse’ and ‘large’, but not the asymmetry.
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Oh, well, that really wasn’t very clear. I think all three have the same cause, but only understand the ‘large’ and ‘sparse’ from L&P.
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Joseph Priestly’s discovery of “dephlogisticated air” is just one landmark in the volatile, ambiguous ‘progress’ of scientific revolution. Although an important milestone in the revolution with regard to our understanding of chemistry, clearly Priestly was not a conceptual convert.
Nonetheless, the revolution proceeded. We stand at a similar juncture with respect to the Climate and Solar sciences. It should already be obvious that the notion of ‘backradiation’ is bankrupt, similarly, the practice of statistically correcting the data is revealed a transparent, craven fraud.
Until such time as a plausible source of Solar dynamo perturbation is settled on, e.g., the Lorentz Force, we are left simply to wait on events.
“the increase of global warming will be slightly attenuated until 2100 A.D”
As around 0.5K of around 0.6K of global warming over the past century came from increased solar activity (counting the effect on cosmic ray deflection), if we enter a Maunder Minimum situation (which had a 20+% difference in CRF, a number of times more change than seen yet in this somewhat weak solar activity time), residual El Ninos will weaken after maybe one last semi-high strength echo, and there will be a lot more than slight attenuation, to say the least, as implied in my usual http://tinyurl.com/nbnh7hq .
Sorry I don’t buy it. The tiny change in TSI that is important to Earth’s temperature due to changes in sunspot activity, whether it be raging or asleep, cannot have an observable impact on Earth. Earth intrinsic variability creates wider swings and more pronounced trends than the Sun is capable of producing. It comes down to energy available to force oceanic atmospheric telenconnections to move from a status quo to another stage. And the only source of energy sufficient to do that is what is stored in the oceans through Earth’s own ability to let more in or reflect more away, coupled with how much energy the oceans belch out or keep stored.
So no, I would have to continue to keep the null hypothesis and reject this solar conjecture, especially based on such little evidence.
The sun accounts for 99.8 of all energy stored in the ocean you have your cuased and effect backwards.
Elaine Meinel here: My father, founder of the first solar observatory on Kitt Peak, Arizona, was CENSORED by the publishers of scientific papers due to his claim the sun was ‘variable star’ and we are entering a Maunder Minimum.
So you don’t see Dr. Aden Meinel in any capacity of the last 12 years and he is now deceased. Couldn’t understand why he was censored. I read some of the emails sent to him. One editor said, ‘If you are right, this is TOO SCARY for our readers’! Another said, ‘The sun doesn’t affect the climate’ which to me is totally insane.
You link doesn’t work.
James you are right of course in terms of where energy comes from that is stored in the oceans. As measured at the top of the atmosphere there is slight and predictable variation that can be mathematically modeled but not to the degree that matters on Earth’s surface. The amount that hits the ocean surface is far more drastically changed by our own atmosphere and its intrinsic ability and variability to allow it in or reflect it away. Also heat energy stored in the oceans can come out in varying amounts and in varying locations and in varying time spans. Intrinsic processes, variable atmospheric conditions, and oceanic heat release or heat storage, are intrinsic to the Earth and which causes weather and climate variability within short and long term time spans of interest to the discussion of the issues related to the past century’s global warming trend.
This is the correct link for Allan MacRae’s Kyoto debate at May 18, 2014 at 5:38 am
http://www.apega.ca//Members/Publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
Pam, it’s both; a pair at the dance.
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emsnews says:
May 18, 2014 at 9:12 am
….
Hi Ms Meinel Supkis
It is rather tragic that scientific community (for ulterior reasons) could be so intolerant of views and eventually cruel to those who have done great deal for advance of science.
I have been thinking that even though the number of sunspots correlates to Earth’s global temperature during the Dalton, Maunder and Spörer minima and can be used to support a hypothesis about the Sun controlling our climate, it is the Sun’s magnetic field that has a direct effect, like the one on cloud formation proposed by Svensmark.
Earth is not the only “globe” to be experiencing “global” cooling. I did my solar studies under Chapman, Larmore and others (at the time Akasofu was honored in our class by Chapman and raised to a full professor) so extra-terrestrial behaviors were not included in the coursework. I would suggest, tho, that the cooling is affecting our neighboring giant buddy in the extreme. I can only suggest that if there is less energy arriving there, the storms would have less energy to dissipate in their dynamical system. So, my personal conviction of gross levels of cooling lies with the evidence recently reported by Hubble folk:
http://www.universetoday.com/111907/hubble-sees-jupiters-red-spot-shrink-to-smallest-size-ever/
Kim, “a dance” is not a scientific rebuttal.
Vuk, science must be cruel. It MUST be!
@ur momisugly David, did Schatten and Tobiska produce any graphs you could add to your post ?
@ur momisugly JH. The name you are missing is Leif Svalgaard. But he doesn’t think that any reduction in sunspots in the next solar cycle (25) will cause cooling. Though he does think that the reduction in sunspots my veer nearer to that of the Maunder than the Dalton. Perhaps he will correct me if I have made an erroneous statement.
J.H. says:
May 18, 2014 at 6:02 am
Tom in Florida says: May 18, 2014 at 4:23 am “But David, you know who got it right based on his understanding of how the sun works. Why no mention of him?”
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Well then Tom, you put his name there so we can research it. I hate mystery.
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Most of us know I was speaking of Dr Svalgaard. David knows that also but he and the Dr disagree on this subject as we have seen over many solar threads.
That said Vuk, it must avoid at all cost, politicalization efforts. NOAA now has a climate.gov site that is an example of the reason why our founding organizers demanded the separation of church and state. A church is a church, whether it is based on sacred myth scripture filled with gods or political factions fueled with environmento-watermelon wine.