Recent paper finds 1950-2009 Solar Grand Maximum was a 'rare or even unique event' in 3,000 years

Golly Salvatore, now there’s a mechanism. Not.

Pamela Gray says:
August 11, 2014 at 10:59 am
We have yet to be graced with a calculable solar mechanism for the Little Ice Age.
And for why the Sun itself should vary…

An interesting paper on a model used to determine sulfur gas solar insolation change resulting in temperature change on Mars. There are also many papers on using geostratospheric engineering as a way to mitigate global warming. Basically injection of sulfur into the stratosphere. Climate change on large doses of stupidity steroids and grant-drunk swigs from the money trough.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CF8QFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffaculty.washington.edu%2Fdcatling%2FTian2010_Sulfur_Cools_Early_Mars.pdf&ei=ZAXpU-jwLq_xigLSt4DwDQ&usg=AFQjCNH_QQbEqN0F43P85TDRAoIKBpK9Qw&sig2=OH4btfVSsb2Nn0QkP8t2Jw&bvm=bv.72676100,d.cGE

Pamela Gray says:
August 11, 2014 at 10:59 am
Explain please why the LIA needs its own special explanation but the thousands of prior such events in the Quaternary don’t.
Aerosols for a few years cannot change the underlying climatic trends, which demonstrably follow from changes in modulation of solar irradiance and magnetism. These changes not only can be calculated, but have been for hundreds of thousands of years into the past and far into the future. They do a splendid job of hindcasting observed glacial & interglacial cycles. You OTOH cannot even present any evidence that the supposed mechanisms you imagine have occurred, because you can’t. Nothing approaching what you propose has been observed for any part of the planet, let alone in the ENSO record. Volcanic sulphates simply don’t persist long enough, for starters.
So, in sum, you have failed to show the Null Hypothesis false, ie shown no need to assume that the LIA was any different from thousands of other such cycles, failed to show that centennial scale climatic changes follow eruptions. failed to show any climatic effect at all from volcanoes (ie only on weather for at most a few years), failed to show any sign of the mechanism which you propose & failed to show quantitatively how that mechanism could work, among other failings lethal to your hypothesis.
Busted.

So milo, you are saying that the calculated real reduction in solar insolation over a multi-year period would not affect the heat budget in the oceans which spews out its stored energy in clearly lagged ways, the Walker Cell circulation would continue as before, the atmospheric bridge would still work, and the global temperature beyond a temporary change in air temps would recover as soon as the sun shines again. IE heat storage into the oceans (which has lags as great as 600 years) would not be affected by stratospheric veils but air temps would. The affect of reduction in solar insolation during the LIA evidenced by the ice cores would somehow be completely ignored by the oceans but attended to by the air and would be here today, gone tomorrow with no accumulative affects at all.
That’s a lot of science to ignore.

It is my understanding that solar enthusiasts consider the ultimate affect to be on clouds thus reducing solar insolation at the surface thus causing cooling and reduced oceanic energy storage. So it seems to me that the physical ability of clouds reflecting solar irradiance away from Earth must also be applied by this group with regard to stratospheric veils. The mechanisms of reflection/absorption are essentially the same, and the resulting change of Earth’s heat energy balance would be very similar, IE Immediate AND lagged affects. One would also have to consider oceanic circulation of this cloudy sky less heated store of water. I know several here speak at length of UV increases leading to ocean and thus global warming. Under an occluded sky, these same commenters would have to consider reduced UV thus reduced ocean and global temps. You cannot accept one and not the other when the mechanism results in the same outcome, IE reduced (increased) insolation of what ever part of the solar spectrum you focus on, whether from clouds or volcanic veiling, leading to increased (reduced) oceanic and atmospheric heating.

Oceans absorb roughly half (see the link below) of solar insolation that reaches the surface, about 120 w/m2 of the calculated 240w/m2 that make it to Earth’s surface. Cloud occluded skies can reduce solar insolation by 20% give or take. Diminution by stratospheric veils are harder to calculate. So let’s just use the cloudy sky figure and pretend that a cloud of ash and sulfur has darkened the sky in the Pacific equatorial band. Spend 2 years or more under that kind of reduction in watts being stored day in and day out in the equatorial band. These ash plumes are dense locally, regionally for the bigger ones, and their longer lasting stratospheric veils are implicated as a direct cause in epic global cooling events. Let the Earth continue to experience diminution of incoming solar insolation on a global scale thanks to that veil encircling the Earth as it spreads from pole to pole. Slowly over the course of 2 to 4 years the atmosphere clears and direct heating can be restored. But what about the oceans? Do they immediately catch up and refill the tank? Probably not as the ENSO cycle and all the other systems return to normal.
But that is just half of the picture. There must be an indirect volcanic result that has longer effects. Why? Because of what we know about ENSO connections to the atmosphere and global circulation of water from the Pacific equatorial band. Just about every tome I have read only closely considers direct reduction in irradiance and ignores the indirect sequelae of a reduced tank of gas in the form of less warmed equatorial water (which by the way is the bedrock of our heat engine), especially in the Pacific Equatorial band, sitting in the ocean waiting to circulate. The wind and current driven circulation on the surface is relatively quick (we have seen meandering surface pools do their thing thanks to Bob Tisdale) but the entire thing can take 600-1000 years riding the grand over-turning circulation route and mixing into various layers. The Pacific Equatorial band is a very large body of water absorbing heat energy to a depth of 300 or more meters. In our thought experiment, a 20% reduction in the watts it absorbs is no small thing.
That system is priority 1 for me when it comes to significant cold weather pattern regime shifts downward like we see in the temperature series from 1000 to 1700 that have been correlated with volcanic activity. The Earth hardly had time to breath before yet another stratospheric veil appeared reducing insolation once again. Eventually the system was running on air with no gas station in sight. And one more volcano blast sent us into the deeper depth of the Little Ice Age. The records show that stratospheric volcanic events died down and we have been climbing out of that empty tank of gas since then.
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/educators/heat_budget/background/sys_struc/HB_sys_concepts.htm

Pamela Gray says:
August 11, 2014 at 1:35 pm
Yes, I can be confident of the difference. For starters, your own volcanic sulphate experts Robock, et al, have shown that after prompt cooling, the annual scale effect of big eruptions is to warm most of the world, not cool it.
Can you really not see the difference between water droplets (clouds) in the troposphere & aerosols in the stratosphere?
Until you can point to some actual climatic evidence showing a response on the multidecadal or centennial scale to eruptions, then all your (easily shown false) speculation is pointless. But all available evidence shows no cooling or warming effect from eruptions after at most a few years. The climate system soon returns to whatever trend was the rule before the events.