Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
In a recent interchange over at Joanne Nova’s always interesting blog, I’d said that the slow changes in the sun have little effect on temperature. Someone asked me, well, what about the cold temperatures during the Maunder and Dalton sunspot minima? And I thought … hey, what about them? I realized that like everyone else, up until now I’ve just accepted the idea of cold temperatures being a result of the solar minima as an article of faith … but I’d never actually looked at the data. And in any case, I thought, what temperature data would we have for the Maunder sunspot minimum, which lasted from 1645 to 1715? So … I went back to the original sources, which as always is a very interesting ride, and I learned a lot.
It turns out that this strong association of sunspot minima and temperature is a fairly recent development. Modern interest in the Maunder sunspot minimum was sparked by John Eddy’s 1976 publication of a paper in Science entitled “The Maunder Minimum”. In that paper, Eddy briefly discusses the question of the relationship between the Maunder sunspot minimum and the global temperature, viz:
The coincidence of Maunder’s “prolonged solar minimum” with the coldest excursion of the “Little Ice Age” has been noted by many who have looked at the possible relations between the sun and terrestrial climate (73). A lasting tree-ring anomaly which spans the same period has been cited as evidence of a concurrent drought in the American Southwest (68, 74). There is also a nearly 1 : 1 agreement in sense and time between major excursions in world temperature (as best they are known) and the earlier excursions of the envelope of solar behavior in the record of 14C, particularly when a 14C lag time is allowed for: the Sporer Minimum of the 16th century is coincident with the other severe temperature dip of the Little Ice Age, and the Grand Maximum coincides with the “medieval Climatic Optimum” of the 11th through 13th centuries (75, 76). These coincidences suggest a possible relationship between the overall envelope of the curve of solar activity and terrestrial climate in which the 11-year solar cycle may be effectively filtered out or simply unrelated to the problem. The mechanism of this solar effect on climate may be the simple one of ponderous long-term changes of small amount in the total radiative output of the sun, or solar constant. These long-term drifts in solar radiation may modulate the envelope of the solar cycle through the solar dynamo to produce the observed long-term trends in solar activity. The continuity, or phase, of the 11-year cycle would be independent of this slow, radiative change, but the amplitude could be controlled by it. According to this interpretation, the cyclic coming and going of sunspots would have little effect on the output of solar radiation, or presumably on weather, but the long-term envelope of sunspot activity carries the indelible signature of slow changes in solar radiation which surely affect our climate (77). [see paper for references]
Now, I have to confess, that all struck me as very weak, with more “suggest” and “maybe” and “could” than I prefer in my science. So I thought I’d look to see where he was getting the temperature data to support his claims. It turns out that he was basing his opinion of the temperature during the Maunder minimum on a climate index from H. H. Lamb, viz:
The Little Ice Age lasted roughly from 1430 to 1850 … if we take H. H. Lamb’s index of Paris London Winter Severity as a global indicator.
After some searching, I found the noted climatologist H. H. Lamb’s England winter severity index in his 1965 paper The Early Medieval Warm Epoch And Its Sequel. He doesn’t give the values for his index, but I digitized his graph. Here are Lamb’s results, showing the winter severity in England. Lower values mean more severe winters.
So let me pose you a small puzzle. Knowing that Eddy is basing his claims about a cold Maunder minimum on Lamb’s winter severity index … where in Lamb’s winter severity index would you say that we would find the Maunder and Dalton minima? …
Figure 1. H.H. Lamb’s index of winter severity in England.
As you can see, there is a reasonable variety in the severity of the winters in England. However, it is not immediately apparent just where in there we might find the Maunder and Dalton minima, although there are several clear possibilities. So to move the discussion along, let me reveal where they are:
Figure 2. As in Figure 1, but with the dates of the Maunder and Dalton minima added.
As we might expect, the Maunder minimum is the coldest part of the record. The Dalton minimum is also cold, but not as cold as the Maunder minimum, again as we’d expect. Both of them have warmer periods both before and after the minima, illustrating the effect of the sun on the … on the … hang on … hmmm, that doesn’t look right … let me check my figures …
…
…
…
… uh-oh
…
…
Well, imagine that. I forgot to divide by the square root of minus one, so I got the dates kinda mixed up, and I put both the Maunder and the Dalton 220 years early … here are the actual dates of the solar minima shown in Lamb’s winter severity index.
Figure 3. H.H. Lamb’s England winter severity index, 1100-1950, overlaid with the actual dates of the four solar minima ascribed to that period. Values are decadal averages 1100-1110,1110-1120, etc., and are centered on the decade.
As you can see …
• The cooling during the Wolf minimum is indistinguishable from the two immediately previous episodes of cooling, none of which get much below the overall average.
• The temperature during the Sporer minimum is warmer than the temperature before and after the minimum.
• The coldest and second coldest decades in the record were not associated with solar minima.
• The fastest cooling in the record, from the 1425 decade to the 1435 decade, also was not associated with a solar minimum.
• Contrary to what we’d expect, the Maunder minimum warmed from start to finish.
• The Dalton minimum is unremarkable in any manner other than being warmer than the decade before the start and the decade after the end of the minimum. Oh, and like the Maunder, it also warmed steadily over the period of the minimum.
Urk … that’s what Eddy based his claims on. Not impressed.
Let me digress with a bit of history. I began this solar expedition over a decade ago thinking, along with many others, that as they say, “It’s the sun, stupid!”. I, and many other people, took it as an unquestioned and unexamined “fact” that the small variations of the sun, both the 11-year cycles and the solar minima, had a discernible effect on the temperature. As a result, I spent endless hours investigating things like the barycentric movement of the sun. I went so far as to write a spreadsheet to calculate the barycentric movement for any period of history, and compared those results to the temperatures.
But the more I looked, the less I found. So I started looking at the various papers claiming that the 11-year cycle was visible in various climate datasets … still nothing. To date, I’ve written up and posted the results of my search for the 11-year cycle in global sea levels, the Central England Temperature record, sea surface temperatures, tropospheric temperatures, global surface temperatures, rainfall amounts, the Armagh Observatory temperatures, the Armagh Observatory daily temperature ranges, river flows, individual tidal stations, solar wind, the 10Beryllium ice core data, and some others I’ve forgotten … nothing.
Not one of them shows any significant 11-year cycle.
And now, for the first time I’m looking at temperature effects of the solar minima … and I’m in the same boat. The more I look, the less I find.
However, we do have some actual observational evidence for the time period of the most recent of the minima, the Dalton minimum, because the Berkeley Earth temperature record goes back to 1750. And while the record is fragmentary and based on a small number of stations, it’s the best we have, and it is likely quite good for comparison of nearby decades. In any case, here are those results:
Figure 4. The Berkeley Earth land temperature anomaly data, along with the Dalton minimum.
Once again, the data absolutely doesn’t support the idea of the sun ruling the temperature. IF the sun indeed caused the variations during the Dalton minimum, it first made the temperature rise, then fall, then rise again to where it started … sorry, but that doesn’t look anything like what we’d expect. For example, if the low spot around 1815 is caused by low solar input, then why does the temperature start rising then, and rise steadily until the end of the Dalton minimum, while the solar input is not rising at all?
So once again, I can’t find evidence to support the theory. As a result, I will throw the question open to the adherents of the theory … what, in your estimation, is the one best piece of temperature evidence that shows that the solar minima cause cold spells?
Now, a few caveats. First, I want to enlist your knowledge and wisdom in the search, so please just give me your one best shot. I’m not interested in someone dumping the results of a google search for “Maunder” on my desk. I want to know what YOU think is the very best evidence that solar minima cause global cooling.
Next, don’t bother saying “the Little Ice Age is the best evidence”. Yes, the Maunder occurred during the Little Ice Age (LIA). But the Lamb index says that the temperature warmed from the start of the Maunder until the end. Neither the Maunder’s location, which was quite late in the LIA, nor the warming Lamb shows from the start to the end of the Maunder, support the idea that the sun caused the LIA cooling.
Next, please don’t fall into the trap of considering climate model results as data. The problem, as I have shown in a number of posts, is that the global temperature outputs of the modern crop of climate models are nothing but linear transforms of their inputs. And since the models include solar variations among their inputs, those solar variations will indeed appear in the model outputs. If you think that is evidence for solar forcing of temperature … well, this is not the thread for you. So no climate model results, please.
So … what do you think is the one very best piece of evidence that the solar minima actually do affect the temperature, the evidence that you’d stand behind and defend?
My regards to you all,
w.
[UPDATE] In the comments, someone said that the Central England Temperature record shows the cooling effects of the solar minima … I’m not finding it:
As you can see, there is very little support for the “solar minima cause cool temperatures” hypothesis in the CET. Just as in the Lamb winter severity data and the Berkeley Earth data, during both the Dalton and Maunder minima we see the temperature WARMING for the last part of the solar minimum. IF the cause is in fact a solar slump … then why would the earth warm up while the sun is still slumping? And in particular, in the CET the Dalton minimum ends up quite a bit warmer than it started … how on earth does this support the “solar slump” claim, that at the end of the Dalton minimum it’s warmer than at the start?
The Usual Request: I know this almost never happens, but if you disagree with something that I or someone else has said, please have the common courtesy to QUOTE THEIR EXACT WORDS that you disagree with. This prevents much confusion and misunderstanding.
Data: Eddy’s paper, The Maunder Minimum
Lamb’s paper, The Early Medieval Warm Epoch And Its Sequel
Berkeley Earth, land temperature anomalies
Dr Norman Page says:
June 24, 2014 at 10:10 pm
After correlating all sorts of wiggles for 40 years I have no problem using the NGRIP for the Maunder and Dalton and the DYE 3 for the 20th century. It is the sort of thing you have to do when dealing with ,,,
Fig. 3 of Berggren shows how poor Dye-3 is for the 20th century before ~1950, so you should have a problem. The whole level of Dye-3 before 1950 is wrong [too high]. The NGRIP data in Fig. 3 shows what the level should be. How do I know this? Because the cosmic ray flux can be derived from the strength of the solar wind magnetic field which we now know rather accurately back to 1845. So, you are welcome to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.
One should not pick cherries according to what one likes, but according to the reliability of the data.
Dr. Strangelove says:
June 24, 2014 at 10:21 pm
Do you really believe the Maunder and Dalton Minima occurred during the LIA is purely coincidental? The sun was unusually weak and the climate was unusually cold but they have no relation, just coincidence.
That is right.
“one needs to go back over 8,000 years in order to find a time when the Sun was, on average, as active as in the last 60 years.” (Solanki et al)
Is not true, as I have shown several times, but perhaps you were not paying attention.
Were you not part of the Max Planck Institute solar research team?
No, but Solanki and Co. are on my ISSI 233 team: http://www.leif.org/research/Svalgaard_ISSI_Proposal_Base.pdf
Leif says:
The period from 1750-1800, where Leif has the revised SSN averaging about 64, was a period of substantial global warming (I’m looking at Moberg 2005), not far short of the substantial warming since 1950 (if we can believe HadCRUT, GISS etcetera), during which time solar activity was a bit higher still (according to Steinhilber 2009).
I don’t see how Leif is able to construe the 18th century coincidence between rising global temperatures and high solar activity (not exceptional perhaps, but high) as evidence against high solar activity as a major driver of global temperature. Pretty bizarre Leif.
The sun the same will judge who is right.
http://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/c2/1024/latest.jpg
From Dr. Strangelove on June 24, 2014 at 8:09 pm:
How do you know that would cool the planet that much? Between Eschenbach’s Thunderstorm Thermostat hypothesis and numerous other proposed regulating mechanisms, giving a temperature drop by crunching TSI through a simple equation seems foolish. The Earth is not a block of aluminum on a digitally-controlled hot plate.
First off, don’t you think the Egyptians had standards? They built pyramids and cities and monuments, so I’m sure they likely figured out the importance of reference standards.
As to the rest, dear Lord you really stepped in it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadion_%28unit_of_length%29
The drop in temperature in the stratosphere most visible over the South Pole.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_AMJ_SH_2014.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_SH_2014.gif
Matthew R Marler says:
June 24, 2014 at 8:34 pm
Nope. The reference is to the accuracy of such reconstructions, not the use of principal component analysis. If you look at say half a dozen of these reconstructions, they are all over the place, floor to ceiling … how can anyone seriously claim that that is “accurate”? That’s a joke. If they were accurate they would all get approximately the same answer. They don’t, therefore they are not accurate.
The methodology in MBH98 was an incorrect uncentered PCA analysis, so no, thankfully that method has never been tried again. And generally, they try out some new whiz-bang method with a new acronym with each new incarnation. I think the latest was “ECS”.
Mann’s later work is as shabby as MBH98. For heaven’s sake, he used the Tiljander data upside down, then defended using it upside down, then used it again in Mann2008 … and again upside down. Better work? Don’t make me laugh.
Please, please, Matthew, do your homework. Go to climateaudit and read about the successive unsuccessful attempts to rehabilitate the hockeystick. Read about his sleight of hand regarding withholding proxies to “test” his method. Read about the “CENSORED TO 1400” folder. You’re just making things up if you claim Mann did “better work”, you have no evidence of that at all.
Finally, the issue is not whether these days they use PCA or some other method. They are always inventing a new one. The problem is use of “data snooping” and post-hoc proxy selection, along with a method which actively mines for hockeysticks, combined with an addiction to discredited bristlecone pine proxies and careful elimination of any troublesome proxies. You truly are way out of your depth, my friend. The multi-proxy analyses all have very serious problems, and claiming that they have been shown to be “essentially confirmed” is simply not true.
There’s nothing there to “debate”, Matthew, and claiming that there is gives him false prominence.
He is convicted by his own words of advising his co-conspirators to destroy emails sought under a FOI request, and undoubtedly destroyed his own copies of those emails … and you sit here waffling about his honesty? Truly, neither you nor Tony appear to have any idea of the kind of man you are dealing with and want to “meet head on”.
Perhaps you’ve never heard that “any publicity is good publicity”, and I assure you, Tony saying on Judith Curry’s blog that Mann’s methods have been shown by the NAS to be “essentially correct” is publicity that Mann would gladly pay for. That was a huge win for him.
As a result, you and Tony are actively facilitating Mann’s ability to spread further falsehoods. Color me disappointed. Tony is holding hands with a crook, claiming said miscreant is essentially correct, and meanwhile not pointing out his math mistakes, nor his use of upside-down proxies, nor even his bogus stripbark pines, much less a single word about his illegal actions … and you see no problems with that, you’re right there symbolically holding hands with the both of them and busting me for objecting to this charade.
Your choice, but I wouldn’t … like the song says:
“As near as I remember, ’twas a year ago November,
I was walking down the street in tipsy pride.
No one I was disturbin’ as I lay down by the curbin’ …
And a pig came up and lay down at my side.
As I lay there in the gutter, thinking thoughts I cannot utter,
A lady passing by was heard to say
‘You can tell a man who boozes by the company he chooses!’ …
And the pig got up and slowly walked away.”
Sorry to be so blunt, Matthew, but the mann is a snake …
w.
The drop in temperature in the lower stratosphere over the equator.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_AMJ_EQ_2014.gif
Leif
I see you disagree with Solanki et al but your paper is just a proposal to research. Where is the output of the research team?
From ren on June 24, 2014 at 11:16 pm:
Have you never heard of winter? North Hemisphere has summer now, so South Hemisphere has winter. Thus cooling.
Where I live in central southern England UK, snow is a rarity, an occaisional light dusting but usually gone that afternoon. But in the winter of 2009, the second year without sunspots, (not sure I remember the exact year) we had 20cm of snow and I couldn’t get to work for a week. But for me the real interest that year were the BBC weather reports where we were getting record low and near record low temperatures here and there in the UK.
OK in almost any year there are record lows or highs from time to time, but it seemed to me that we were getting more near record lows then. Probably nothing that would stand out in the statistics, but I thought then that it was interesting and so I am looking forward to seeing what effect the putative lack of sunspots might have in about 2022 or so.
I think that the one year without sunspots every 11 years or so has no discernable impact, but I suspect that several years on the trot without sunspots will have an impact, and that we saw a hint of that in 2009. Bring on 2022. Mechanism, no idea.
I think that we should be open to any and all ideas, even extreme and apparently crazy stuff if only to re-affirm dismisal of those theories. There is no harm in re-examining received wisdom. If we are open minded enough an unexpected correlation may be found, then eventually after research somone may find a plausible, perhaps unexpected mechanism, and science and understanding moves forward.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
June 24, 2014 at 11:58 pm
——————————————————–
Southern sea ice extent reached 1.794 mil on today,s Cryosphere page. That is the second highest anomaly in the 35 year satellite record. This should be another record setting year down there for the sea ice.
kadaka
“The Earth is not a block of aluminum on a digitally-controlled hot plate.”
Of course but it still obeys S-B law of radiation. It would be foolish to think otherwise. Or you don’t believe the greenhouse effect?
“don’t you think the Egyptians had standards?”
Yes they do but it’s not certified by ISO and WMO. If Eratosthenes had a bigger error it’s because his Egyptian sources got the distance between Alexandria and Syene wrong. But his sticks were pretty accurate though also not certified by ISO and WMO.
lsvalgaard
says
“Both the sunspot number shown and the cosmogenic record are not what we today think are the correct versions. For the sunspot number see Fig. xx4 of http://www.leif.org/research/ISSI-Book-Section-4.pdf and for the isotopes see Figure 2 of http://www.leif.org/research/Svalgaard_ISSI_Proposal_Base.pdf [note the team members]”
Sounds interesting, however there are a number of studies based on pollen as well as diatoms that correlate long term changes solar activity with the MWP and LIA, you guys have your work cut out for you if intend to prove that each solar mimum and maximum returns TSI and solar magnetic field strengths roughly to the same value over many decades.
http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140109/srep03611/full/srep03611.html
From Dr. Strangelove on June 25, 2014 at 12:41 am:
Do you? From out in space where observers of Earth will see energy in = energy out, Stefan-Boltzmann describes Earth. You can calculate the effective temperature of the planet once you account for the actual absorption.
But here underneath the greenhouse gases, our “global average” temperature is controlled by the rate of heat retention. So it is foolish to think S-B will give surface temperatures.
Don’t forget all the feedbacks like clouds, etc, that affect absorption and retention. We can maintain the current temperatures with a bit more or a bit less TSI.
Then who maintained the standards of the time? Wasn’t there an authority establishing the accuracy of measurements, at least for commerce?
But Pouillet was a pioneer. What authority back then supplied standards and calibration procedures for pyrheliometers? Pouillet had made his own device.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes
So there are two other reasons he got a bigger error. And it was really 16.3%.
Although I think I remember a PBS show, Nova or Scientific American Frontiers or something, that gave the small error. They might have then explained how global warming had not yet significantly increased global circumference due to thermal expansion, or not, it’s been awhile.
The Bunyip
Friday 28 November 1902
Sir, In my letter to you which appeared in your issue […] you have reversed my remark with reference to sun spots. What I said was that a minimum of sunspots was accompanied with wet, and a maximum with dry seasons.
-J. Harcourt Giddons, M.SA. London, Astronomical Meteorologist
Clarence and Richmond Examiner – Saturday 2 January 1904
Recent researches into tho nature and periodicity of sun-spots throw a good deal of light–if the paradox may pass–upon the recurring dark places of the solar photo-sphere. Those who believe that there is a direct connection between sun-spots and the rainfall will no doubt be able to extract some support for that view from an article by the Rev. Father Cortie, in the November number of the “Ninteenth Century.” This observer, with the cautious reserve of a true scientist, refuses to commit himself definitely.
Examiner
Tuesday 6 September 1904
Knowledge of sun spots is distinctly limited, and Sir Norman Lockyer contended that the discovery and understanding of these phenomena will prove one of the most beneficial additions to the world in general. He advances the theory that such knowledge may enable astronomers to convert the sun into an agent to enable us to cope with droughts and famines, and that the spots on the sun may render it possible to predict with practical certainty the coming of famine and the exact part of the world where it will take place.
Western Champion
Friday 12 April 1912
Dealing with the question “Has a spot on the sun anything to do with the price of wheat” … “The whole question..is still in its primitive stages”
Bendigo Advertiser
Saturday 16 March 1918
There is a correspondence between sun spots and the weather. The more sun spots there are the more cyclones in the Indian Ocean, and the more West Indian hurricanes. The years when the sun spots are at their maximum are apt to be cold and wet.
The Australasian
Saturday 6 January 1923
The Commonwealth meteorologist (Sir. Hunt) states that there is nothing in sun spots to suggest any effect on the weather.
The Northern Miner
Wednesday 18 August 1926
“Terrestrial weather is another phenomena which may be connected to solar activity, and this is also a subject of study in many laboratories and observatories.”
Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate
Wednesday 7 September 1927
The extraordinary storms which the Earth has been going through, first in one phone and then another, are attributed by many to the usually large sun spots observed at the leading observatories.
Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate
Tuesday 3 December 1935
The effect of sun spots on terrestrial conditions is an important branch of Solar research work. Their presence has been identified with magnetic storms, terrestrial aurorae, etc., and increasing evidence tends to show that they have an effect on plant growth.[!]
The Argus
Saturday 11 October 1952
LOS ANGELES: Gigantic explosions on the sun set off a chain reaction which resulted in tropical rainstorms along the Pacific equator, a scientist reported yesterday. The first substantial evidence to link solar disturbances and formation of storms within the earth’s atmosphere was revealed by Dr. Clarence Palmer, of the University of California Institute of Geophysics. Bright spots on the sun, Dr. Palmer said, were followed by a consistent meteorological pattern along the Pacific equator.
BBC
Friday, February 13, 1998
Scientists blame sun for global warming — Climate changes such as global warming may be due to changes in the sun rather than to the release of greenhouse gases on Earth. Climatologists and astronomers speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Philadelphia say the present warming may be unusual – but a mini ice age could soon follow.
* * * * * * * *
See the sudden change of temperature in the stratosphere in 2001.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_SH_2001.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_EQ_2001.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_NH_2001.gif
At the beginning of 2001 suns magnetic activity strongly decreased.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/index.html
Willis
I had not intended to return to this thread as the argument you seem to have with me makes unseemly reading and detracts from your own article. However your very long reply to Matthew has caused me to return. Especially this;
‘Tony is holding hands with a crook, claiming said miscreant is essentially correct, and meanwhile not pointing out his math mistakes, nor his use of upside-down proxies, nor even his bogus stripbark pines, much less a single word about his illegal actions … and you see no problems with that, you’re right there symbolically holding hands with the both of them and busting me for objecting to this charade.’
As you have said, there have been myriad articles that point out in explicit terms the shortcomings (as sceptics see them) of the HS. However they have had little impact outside the febrile area of a few blogs and the hockey stick and its many derivatives still influence main stream thinking whether we like it or not.
What on earth do you think would be gained by yet another bitter attack on this icon? For this is surely what you are suggesting I should have done when you complain that I have not explicitly referenced these flaws for the umpteenth time? Don’t you think there might be other ways to undermine the ‘science’ than being perpetually angry about something that is securely embedded in the minds of those taking decisions relating to the climate?
Willis, we all have different ways of writing. You tend to be outspoken whilst I tend to be understated. The reason for this no doubt lies in our backgrounds and nationalities and the audiences we address. I am trying to reach both warmists and the uncommitted and I can’t do this if from the outset I put forward arguments they will immediately dismiss and at that point stop reading.
In ‘The Long slow thaw?’ I reconstructed CET from 1659 to 1538 and thought it would be useful to run it alongside two more famous reconstructions, that of Dr Mann and Hubert Lamb as that was likely to retain the interest of readers on all sides of the debate. Mann and Lambs results differ substantially as I showed in various graphs. Throughout the article I make numerous understated sceptical references as to the accuracy of the Hockey stick. Perhaps you missed them? Here are just a few examples;
‘Mann’s research was thorough and interesting, and like Manley’s work with CET, and Hansen’s with global temperature, was a considerable feat of research and re-interpretation of existing knowledge, which until then had accepted considerable variability, with previous episodes of warming exceeding those in the modern era.’
‘….coupled with a lesser impact of the ‘Little Ice Age’ than had previously been accepted.’
‘An alternative explanation is that the reconstructions and instrumental global data sets in fig 15a together with those city ones mentioned in (37) do in fact accurately represent the prevailing climates of the time, and therefore it is ‘the hockey stick’ that is not a reliable representation.’
‘Coupled with the long lived CET instrumental records, this appears to show that if the Mann reconstruction is correct, the British climate has at times varied substantially from that of the remainder of the Northern Hemisphere for 400 years or so.’
‘ So we have two competing climate history stories-one developed over a lifetime of academic research mostly before the computer era, and the other derived from a scientist using modern statistical techniques and the extensive use of novel proxies interpreted in a highly sophisticated manner using computers.’
Now it is unkindly said that the Americans don’t do irony, but does any of that sound as if I am supporting Dr Mann?
Like it or not the hockey stick remains influential to this day and to believe it has been discredited is surely wishful thinking. So, you are working on the basis that no one believes it whilst I work on the basis that it still represents mainstream thinking that affects govt and institutional thinking, albeit things have moved on with other reconstructions.
I choose to try to point out that natural variability is much greater than is currently believed and thereby try to undermine the results of the HS. To this end I research and publish material that relates to this considerable natural variability. I think this is more effective than producing yet another angry condemnation that no one in the wider and influential world will take any notice of.
That my sympathies lie with the natural variation depicted by Lamb rather than the ‘highly sophisticated’ (irony, Willis) computer rendition of Mann can be seen in the conclusions to the article under section 7 of which I have quoted only a small part.
— —-
The long Slow Thaw-Section 7 conclusion;
4) The nature of the proxies used in MBH98 and 99 have inherent problems and have proved very controversial. Tree rings have an inability to adequately represent the conditions of the entire year, amongst other difficulties, whilst SST’s have their own considerable shortcomings. Mixing proxies also causes their own problems. Taken in total, the data used in such studies is unlikely to accurately represent the climates prevailing at the time back to 1400AD and 1000AD. Carrying out complex statistical analysis on questionable data does not render the initial data any more meaningful as a scientific measure. Paleo reconstructions as a whole should be treated with caution when it relates to precise representations of temperature.
5) Lamb gathered together a variety of forms of evidence in his reconstruction. The schematic of composite graphs seen in figure 16 and 17 -when compared to the reconstruction to 1538- seems to confirm with other research that Lamb’s view of climate history was broadly correct. The main caveats we would place is that our own 1538 reconstruction seems to indicate slightly warmer humps around 1550 and 1630 than Lamb notes. This needs to be checked as it was unexpected
6) The hockey stick remains a potent icon to this day. However the gradual decline in temperatures over the centuries that it depicts cannot be detected, nor the lack of variability of the climate over the same time scales. The sharp uptick in temperatures from the start of the 20th Century is a likely artefact of computer modelling through over complex statistical interpretation of inadequate proxies. Modern warming needs to be put into its historic context with the patterns of considerable natural climatic variability that can be observed from the past.
——- ——– ——-
Willis, I really do not intend to return after this time as this extended debate serves no purpose. I take the view that Mannian thinking is alive and well, you seem to believe its many problems have been fully exposed.
However, the continued advance of policies designed to prevent apparently catastrophic warming continues, mitigated only by financial constraints, surely suggests that the belief in the what the hockey stick appears to be telling us, albeit in its modified forms, still remains main stream thinking and that sceptical critiques have had little mainstream impact.
As I have said before, we each plough our own furrows in our different ways but ultimately we are heading in the same direction.
All the best
Tonyb
@ur momisugly Isvalgaard, you are the only one among the discussants who saw something interesting in my discussion and it is not the first time. So thank you for your attention and realize that your “sensors” closer to natural laws. You advise me to offer my proof this journal WUWT. What would I benefit from it had to announce something big (if true), the list where you pay almost no attention to innovations in science and where the majority of speakers refute the evidence of other, indicating some unproven works and thoughts of some third party (say scientists ). To test my ideas is essential organizations like NASA with the help of the U.S. government. We are talking about programs that contain memory in terabytes.
We talk about the sunspot cycle of about 11 years on average. Imagine those 11 cycles (11.2×11 = 123 years). The figure 123 is a cycle of a butterfly diagram of these spots. There are 4 cycles of 11.2x and many others. in which one can see images of the entire solar system and the interrelationships that cause any changes in the sun. Sunspots are only indicators of something powerful consequences are climate change on all planets. I will try to analyze and Maunder minimum, and other distinctive features such as on and see cause and a similar occurrence in the future. You should not expect, never to be repeated something equivalent. Everything happens for a variety of intensities and at different intervals, but need to convert to the program. It can only be said institutions, if they have any interest. So far, it did not show.
Paraphrasing from my viewpoint:
Willis: Man(n) is a vile deceitful creature, contaminating science, and his Hokey Stick is a pusillanimous globule of virulent corruption that is unfit for all but incineration as contagious toxic waste before it destroys more innocent lives!
Tonyb: Yeah, I agree it’s terrible, but a lot of people think it’s valuable so let’s see what we can get for it!
Alec Rawls says:
June 24, 2014 at 10:44 pm
I don’t see how Leif is able to construe the 18th century coincidence between rising global temperatures and high solar activity (not exceptional perhaps, but high) as evidence against high solar activity as a major driver of global temperature.
It is quite simple: temperature the last 300 years has been increasing while solar activity has not.
Dr. Strangelove says:
June 24, 2014 at 11:35 pm
I see you disagree with Solanki et al but your paper is just a proposal to research. Where is the output of the research team?
In press. Coming soon.
LT says:
June 25, 2014 at 1:58 am
you guys have your work cut out for you if intend to prove that each solar mimum and maximum returns TSI and solar magnetic field strengths roughly to the same value over many decades.
This might help: http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL046658.pdf
One could turn the problem around: why would there the solar minimum values vary when there is no activity?
Nikola Milovic says:
June 25, 2014 at 5:00 am
You advise me to offer my proof this journal WUWT. What would I benefit from it had to announce something big (if true)
Just writing it up in a presentable form will benefit you. In addition, the many eyes at WUWT will give you a [free] review.
Leif. is your paper going to change the number of spot free days or is the chart on the paper you linked going to be about right?
steven says:
June 25, 2014 at 6:14 am
Leif. is your paper going to change the number of spot free days or is the chart on the paper you linked going to be about right?
The number of spot free days will not change. The revised sunspot number of a change of scale.
The preliminary SSN is just ‘about right’.
Leif The Dye 3 data match the neutron count and ionization chamber trends better than the NGRIP. When you derive a data set from observations of a different phenomena you get one more step removed from what you are actually measuring and introduce a whole new set of theoretical assumptions into the data.
Dr Norman Page says:
June 25, 2014 at 6:32 am
Leif The Dye 3 data match the neutron count and ionization chamber trends better than the NGRIP.
The ionization chamber data is not calibrated correctly and should not be spliced to the neutron monitor data. Here we have a good example of cherry picking faulty data because it fits your agenda.