by Javier Vinós
Part I of a three part series.
The Sun is a variable star and the amount of energy it emits varies from month to month, year to year, and century to century. One of the manifestations of these variations are sunspots, which are more common when the Sun is more active and disappear when it is less active. These spots follow a solar cycle of about 11 years, but sometimes there is a longer period, decades or centuries, when the Sun’s activity is so low that there are no spots. These periods are called grand solar minima. There are also periods of decades or centuries when the activity is higher. These are called grand solar maxima.
The Sun provides 99.9% of the energy that the climate system receives. So, there have always been scientists who thought that variations in the Sun were the cause of climate change. The problem is that they never had enough evidence to prove it. Until now.
- The IPCC and NASA say…
The IPCC and NASA are convinced that changes in the Sun have very little effect on climate. They rely on two arguments. The first is that changes in solar activity are very small. We measure them with satellites because they cannot be measured from the surface, and we know that the radiant energy coming from the Sun varies by only 0.1%. The magnitude of the changes is better appreciated when we use the full scale. Many scientists believe that such a small change can only produce small changes in climate.
The second argument is that the evolution of temperature does not coincide with the evolution of solar activity. Since the 1990s, solar activity has decreased while warming has continued.[i]
Actually, this argument is not valid because it does not say that the Sun does not affect temperature, but that it is not the only factor in doing so, something we already knew because temperature responds to many factors such as El Niño, volcanoes, the polar vortex, or changes in the Earth’s orbit. There are many natural causes that change the climate, and what we need to know is whether the Sun is one of the main ones.
To find out, we don’t need to care what the IPCC and NASA think, we need to ask the climate itself. It doesn’t matter how small the changes in the Sun are if it turns out that the climate responds strongly to them by causing big changes.
- Climate during the Holocene
And the best way to find out is to look at what has happened to the climate over the last 11,000 years, the interglacial period we call the Holocene. The advantage of doing this is that the Holocene climate changes could not have been caused by changes in CO₂. They must have been caused by something else.
To study the climate of the past, scientists use various climate proxies that they collect in different parts of the world. A major study published in Science used 73 of these proxies to reconstruct Holocene climate.[ii] I have used the same proxies, with a slight modification in the way they are mixed.
What we see, and what a large number of studies also support, is that there was a warm period of thousands of years, called the Climate Optimum, followed by a long period of cooling, called Neoglaciation.
How do we know that this reconstruction is correct? Another study reconstructed the progress of the Earth’s glaciers over the past 11,000 years.[iii] They divided the globe into 17 regions, and this graph shows the number of regions whose glaciers increased in size during each century of the Holocene.
Since glaciers grow when it is colder, we can invert their figure and compare it to the temperature reconstruction graph so that its meaning is the same. We find a high degree of agreement. The glaciers confirm what the temperature reconstruction shows. We also know that CO₂ has done the opposite of temperature, but that is a story for another day.
Note: y-axis is the Z factor, which is related to temperature anomaly.
Both graphs also show some severe cooling episodes that were accompanied by increased glacier growth. These abrupt climate events of the past have been studied and identified by paleoclimatologists. Of all of them, we will focus on four of the most important ones. The Boreal Oscillation, the 5.2 kiloyear event, the 2.8 kiloyear event, and the Little Ice Age.
The four are separated by multiples of 2,500 years and form a cycle that I have called the Bray cycle because that was the name of the scientist who discovered it in 1968.[iv]
Now that we know the climate of the past, we need to talk about the activity of the Sun in the past.
- Past solar activity
The Sun’s activity is recorded in the tree rings through the action of cosmic rays. A constant stream of cosmic rays from the galaxy reaches the solar system. Some interact with the atmosphere. Some collide with nitrogen in the atmosphere, converting it to carbon-14, which is heavier than normal carbon-12 and radioactive. This carbon-14 combines with oxygen to form radioactive CO₂, which is breathed by trees. The carbon is used in photosynthesis to make cellulose, which allows the tree trunk to grow in diameter. When the tree dies, the carbon-14 in the wood slowly decays over centuries and millennia. You just have to measure how much carbon-14 is left in the wood to know how much time has passed since the tree died.
Each growth ring of a tree records the carbon-14 that was in the atmosphere that year, and scientists have used millennia-old trees and preserved logs to construct a calibration curve that spans tens of thousands of years. This allows them to determine the age of any organic remains, even if it is not a tree trunk, just by knowing the carbon-14 it contains. This is known as radiocarbon dating.
The only problem is that the production of carbon-14 by cosmic rays is not constant. The Sun’s magnetic field deflects the path of cosmic rays, causing many to miss the Earth, and changes in the Sun’s activity affect its magnetic field.
As the Sun’s activity increases, fewer cosmic rays arrive, less carbon-14 is produced, and organic remains appear older because they contain less of it. When the Sun’s activity becomes weaker, more cosmic rays arrive, more carbon-14 is produced, and the organic remains look younger because they contain more of it.
This produces deviations in the calibration curve that allow us to know what the Sun’s activity was in the past.
- Spörer-type solar minima
When we analyze the radiocarbon curve over the last 11,000 years, we observe large deviations that indicate long periods of low solar activity. These extended periods of low solar activity are called grand solar minima and increase carbon-14 production by 2%. The most common ones last about 75 years, and there have been about twenty in the last 11,000 years. The most recent was the Maunder Minimum in the late 17th century. But there are other types of grand solar minima that are much more severe because they last twice as long, about 150 years. The last of these severe solar minima was the Spörer Minimum, which occurred in the 15th and 16th centuries.
There have been only four such Spörer-type grand minima in the entire Holocene. 2,800 years ago, there was the Homer Minimum, 5,200 years ago the Sumerian Minimum, and 10,300 years ago the Boreal Minimum. We know when they occurred thanks to tree rings.
If the dates sound familiar, it is because the four grand Spörer-type Holocene minima coincide exactly with the four major climatic events on the graph we saw earlier. We know that during each of these grand solar minima, when the Sun’s activity dropped for 150 years, the climate experienced a tremendous cooling that had a major effect on climate proxies around the globe.
We also know that low solar activity during the grand minima has had a major impact on human populations. Past human settlements and their component structures can be radiocarbon dated. When humans were doing well in the past, the population grew and they built more, and when they were doing poorly, usually because there was less food, the population decreased and they built less. Scientists have estimated the evolution of the human population of the British Isles by analyzing the radiocarbon dates of thousands and thousands of remains from hundreds of archaeological excavations.[v]
What they have found is that the population increased greatly with the advent of agriculture, but every time there was a severe deterioration in the climate, the human population suffered from diminishing resources. And the largest declines occurred when grand Spörer-type solar minima took place. Other population declines also coincide with other cooling periods, confirming our reconstruction.
This tells us that the worst climate changes in the past have been caused by changes in solar activity. It also tells us that what is bad for humanity is cooling, not warming.
Now we can respond to the IPCC and NASA. Never mind that solar irradiance changes very little, and never mind that temperature does not always do the same thing as solar activity. Clearly there are other factors at play. But we can state emphatically that changes in solar activity affect the climate because that is what the climate says. The study of past climate leaves no room for doubt. The Sun changes the climate. And if we don’t know how it does it, we should study it.
- The 20th century solar maximum
Since low solar activity causes cooling, it stands to reason that high activity must cause warming. Solar activity in the 20th century was very high, in the top 10% of the last 11,000 years.
If we count the number of sunspots in each solar cycle over the last 300 years and divide by the length of each cycle, we can see how much solar activity has deviated from the average. Since the Maunder Minimum, during the Little Ice Age, solar activity has been increasing and was well above average between 1933 and 1996, a period of six cycles of increased solar activity that formed the 20th century solar maximum.
Although we cannot know how much of the 20th century warming is due to this modern solar maximum, there is no denying that it is a significant part, because as we have seen, the Sun has been the cause of much of the major climate change over the past 11,000 years.
- Conclusions
There are two pieces of good news. The first is that solar activity cannot rise above the 20th century maximum. It is not like CO₂, which can keep going up. The Sun’s activity can stay high or go down, but it cannot go up, so the warming should not accelerate and should not be dangerous.
In 2016, I developed a model to predict solar activity in the 21st century. At the time, some scientists believed that solar activity would continue to decline until a new grand solar minimum and mini-ice age. But my model predicts that solar activity in the 21st century will be similar to that of the 20th century. It also predicted that the current solar cycle, the 25th, would have more activity than the previous one, and it was right.
The second piece of good news is that if much of the 20th century warming is due to the Sun, then there is no climate emergency. Believing that all climate change is due to our emissions is one of those errors that sometimes occur in science, like believing that the Earth is the center of the solar system, that interplanetary space is full of ether, or that stomach ulcers are caused by stress, not bacteria.
This article can also be
[i] NASA. Is the Sun causing global warming?
[ii] Marcott, S.A., et al., 2013. A reconstruction of regional and global temperature for the past 11,300 years. science, 339 (6124), pp.1198-1201.
[iii] Solomina, O.N., et al., 2015. Holocene glacier fluctuations. Quaternary Science Reviews, 111, pp.9-34.
[iv] Bray, J.R., 1968. Glaciation and solar activity since the Fifth Century BC and the solar cycle. Nature, 220 (5168).
[v] Bevan, A., et al., 2017. Holocene fluctuations in human population demonstrate repeated links to food production and climate. PNAS, 114 (49), pp.E10524-E10531.
This article can also be watched in a 13-minute video with English and French subtitles.
https://youtu.be/PNgOuROW2iw
I think this video is being shadow banned by utube. It did not come up when I put your name into the search.
Too early for that probably. The name of the channel is “Science & Climate”. Otherwise you might get to my Spanish Youtube channel.
My own search for “Science & Climate youtube” took me to viewpoints I suspect are not like yours.
Top line search result:
“Making the transition to a sustainable future actionable.”
It would be really easy to make an article for “I searched for _this_ and found _that_” on Google to expose the escalating bias but only people who already know it would care.
German, UK folks, and all other CO2-reduction/phobia fanatics have wasted many $trillions on hare-brained wind/solar/battery/EV/Heat Pump, etc., schemes
They have impoverished tens of millions of people in the process, because they are spreading THE TRUE FAITH, based on their science, to save the world
The elites have made oodles of $billions in the process, FOR DECADES.
You will NEVER hear of a halt for building private planes and yachts!!
Excerpts from:
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/natural-forces-cause-periodic-global-warming
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/hunga-tonga-volcanic-eruption
Retained Energy in Atmosphere
Dry Air and Water Vapor
ha = Cpa x T = 1006 kJ/kg.C x T, where Cpa is specific heat of dry air
hg = (2501 kJ/kg, specific enthalpy of WV at 0 C) + (Cpwv x T = 1.84 kJ/kg x T), where Cpwv is specific heat of WV at constant pressure
.
1) Worldwide, determine enthalpy of moist air: T = 16 C and H = 0.0025 kg WV/kg dry air (4028 ppm)
h = ha + H.hg = (1.006T) + H(2501 + 1.84T) = 1.006 (16) + 0.0025 {2501 + 1.84 (16)} = 22.4 kJ/kg dry air
About 16.1 kJ/kg of dry air is retained by air and 6.3 kJ/kg by WV
.
2) Tropics, determine enthalpy of moist air: T = 27 C and H = 0.017 kg WV/kg dry air (27389 ppm)
h = 1.006 (27) + 0.017 {2501 + 1.84 (16)} = 70.5 kJ/kg dry air
About 27.2 kJ/kg of dry air is retained by air and 43.3 kJ/kg by WV
https://www.wikihow.com/Calculate-the-Enthalpy-of-Moist-Air#:~:text=The%20equation%20for%20enthalpy%20is,specific%20enthalpy%20of%20water%20vapor.
.
CO2
h CO2 = Cp CO2 x K = 0.834 x (16 + 273) = 241 kJ/kg CO2, where Cp CO2 is specific heat
.
Worldwide, determine enthalpy of CO2 = {(423 x 44)/(1000000 x 29 = 0.000642 kg CO2/kg dry air} x
241 kJ/kg CO2) @ur momisugly 289 K = 0.155 kJ/kg dry air.
.
Retained energy, world: (16.1 + 6.3 + 0.155) kJ/kg dry air) x 1000j/kJ x 5.148 x 10^18 kg, atmosphere/10^18 = 1.161 x 10^5 EJ
.
Retained energy, Tropics: (27.2 + 43.3 + 0.155) kJ/kg dry air x 1000J/kJ x 2.049 x 10^18 kg, atmosphere/10^18 = 1,448 x 10^4 EJ.
.
The Tropics is a giant energy storage area, almost all of it by evaporating water.
CO2 plays a 100 x (0.155/70.655) = 0.219% role.
About 35% of the Tropics energy is transferred, 24/7/365, to latitudes north and south of the 37 parallels, which do not get enough incoming solar energy.
Humans consumed 604/365 = 1.65 EJ/d, in 2022
Information that would be interesting to put into an article is what’s the total radiation output of the Sun, how much of that output Earth intercepts, and exactly how much energy a 0.1% change is. For the interception, Earth can be treated as a flat disc perpendicular to the incoming Solar radiation. Of course the variation in effective surface radiation varies with latitude and throughout the day due to the varying surface angle of the spher-ish-ical Earth.
Write the numbers out long form, in digits and words, as well as scientific notation.
That 0.1% is of course a HUGE amount of energy. Like 0.1% of a teacup (what AGW people pooh-pooh it as) vs 0.1% of a completely filled Three Gorges Reservoir (what it actually is).
Another thing mostly ignored is the areas of Earth surface between the theorized minimum and maximum areas of the Arctic and Antarctic circles. I say theorized because the maximum and minimum tilt of Earth’s axis have never been observed, only inferred from various evidence.
What differences to the climate are there when the axis is at maximum VS minimum tilt? How many square (choose a measurement) are within the max and min latitudes of the circles?
Earth’s axis is currently trending towards less tilt, wobbling back and forth but more towards less tilt. How has that affected the climate over the past two centuries?
Every sign hammered into the ground, declaring the location of the Arctic Circle *is wrong* unless it was planted very recently. Wait a while and the circle will have moved north of the sign. What lattitude were the Circles at in 1800, 1900, 2000, and now, nearly 25% through the 21st century?
The article says:”The IPCC and NASA are convinced that changes in the Sun have very little effect on climate.”
So a change of 0.1% in our heat source causes no change, but a 0.0001% change in an atmospheric gas will cause a change?
Sort of
What about a 40% change in an atmospheric gas?
What about a logarithmic response rather than a linear response to “a 40% change in an atmospheric gas”?
Log2 of 1.4 is about 0.49. So about half way to a doubling
Yeah, in how long? about 150-160 years and we’re only half-way to the first doubling. You conveniently leave that part out. So about what, 400-500 years for the second doubling? Color me unimpressed.
Halfway towards doubling is very different to a 0.0001% increase.
300/1000000 = .0003
400/1000000 = .0004
.0004 – .0003 = .0001
79% is N2
20% is O2
1% is other including CO2.
Firstly 0.0001 is 0.01%, not 0.0001%
Secondly proportion to the total atmosphere is irrelevant, and certainly not would be meant by an increase in an atmospheric gas. It’s not the percentage that is relevant to the question of how much warming might be expected from a change in CO2.
Try applying this argument to any other atmospheric gas. The CO levels rose, but only by 0.01%, so nothing to be worried about.
The bad news is that a little unsustainable increase in CO2, even if it has possibly saved humanity from starvation, is not going to stave off the next astronomically-driven ice age.
The Earth is currently in a 2.56 million-year ice age named the Quaternary Glaciation with 90% of the world’s fresh water frozen in 200,000 glaciers or polar ice caps. The ice age won’t end until all of the natural ice melts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation
Glacial Period you probably mean.
Yes alphabet, you know there’s a thing called colloquial usage. Instead of calling you a pedant, we can just say ‘dork’.
Other mostly Argon at 0.934%
I predict you do not have a degree in math.
No evidence CO2 causes warming.
So irrelevant.
That is what climate alarmists believe. Problem is, they have no proof—unlike Vinos. They also believe sea level rise will accelerate when it hasn’t. And that Arctic summer sea ice will disappear when it hasn’t And that satellites can accurately measure annual sea level rise when they can’t. Alarmist belief problems continue to accumulate.
In Wokeachusetts, the state says we’re having an emergency. I look out the window and see no emergency. An emergency is when your basement is filling with water, or the engine on your plane is burning, or you just got fired.
And as I found out when I called 911 to ask what I needed to do in response to our city’s declaration of a “climate emergency”, they threatened to sic the police on to me.
Clearly, the real emergency responders at 911 don’t think there is any kind of emergency in play.
Nut Zero will be a “climate emergency” if it is not stopped
Rud,
Forgive me for suggesting a minor correction, but I think your last sentence should read,
Problems continue to accumulate because of alarmist belief.
Both are true.
I think the alarmist belief problems are accelerating.
There is more evidence of several types of manmade warming since 1975 than evidence for natural warming.
The claim that Vinos has evidence is false. He has speculation and incompetent sunspot proxies.
That’s not as bad as leftists wild guessing CAGW with no data at all, but we still do not know the actual split of manmade versus natural causes of the warming since 1975, And we may never know. But that does not stop people from pontificating their own answers.
We do know cloud cover has declined, That has to be one cause of warming. But there is also CO2, SO2 and non-cloud albedo changes.
There seem to be two camps
(1) Those who want to ignore natural causes of climate change
(2) Those who want to ignore manmade causes of climate change
People who say “No one knows”, and then try to collect ALL the evidence, seem to be rare.
Still searching for that evidence of CO2 warming ?
Just like you, I haven’t been able to find it.
CO2 does cause warming, just not a lot, AND it is not the sole cause.
The problem with the IPCC is they assume the answer then construct models to prove that assumption is correct, but never look out their windows to see reality for what it is.
The IPCC talks about a 100% increase of CO2 (doubling)
We are already half way there if 1850 CO2 estimates are reasonable
In spite of scary CAGW predictions since 1979, no CAGW has shown up. It was coming in 10 years for the past 43+ years.
CAGW got lost in New Jersey.
Can you define what you mean by CAGW, please?
Oh please. It’s an existential crisis. Don’t you listen to the news?
Great to see that fungal understands that the slight warming is beneficial and natural…
…. and absolutely NOTHING to waste billions of $ on solving a problem that doesn’t exist anyway.
As you admit there is not a problem, let’s all go to using the most reliable and stable electricity supply system available.. COAL and GAS with hydro where applicable.
The other stuff like junk wind and solar is just a waste of time and money.. why use it. !
That would reasonably be defined as a catastrophe, on a global scale, as a result of anthropogenic global warming. You are welcome.
It would not be that your wine grapes got too hot and shriveled, split or moldy from too much rain, or smoky from big forest fires … that would not be a global catastrophe.
Thanks for this excellent report. It is clear and easy to understand.
Thank you, nice read to start my day. You put a lot of pieces in order very well.
Mr. Ed, you’re a talking horse, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Ed
Now a writing one 🤣
Technically a “horse whisperer”…
Yes, whispering does sound like a ‘horse’ throat.
An excellent climate discussion which is sadly missing from the main-stream media.
“When the tree dies, the carbon-14 in the wood slowly decays …”
Why does the tree need to die? Would not C-14 begin to decay immediately upon formation, regardless of whether or not it is incorporated in wood?
JH true, but the living tree (and any other living organism) will continue to accumulate new 14C at a much faster rate than the decay. 14C half life is 5730 years.
The technique has an uncertainty in the dating that usually expands more than the life of an organism, and as Rud says, many organisms recycle their 14C while alive and they stop doing that while living. This is not true for the rings of very long-living trees, but the video is intended to be short and simple to get into more fine details.
As an example, radiocarbon dating should allow us to date the death of the Tyrol iceman, not his birthdate, but the reality is that it took place during the Sumerian Minimum, so the uncertainty is about 300 years.
Not being a radiocarbon expert, I nevertheless surmise that to some extent, while a tree is alive, the radiocarbon may turnover, staying near equilibrium with the atmosphere.
I do know more about the human body, wherein, for example, throughout life the bony skeleton undergoes fairly continuous turnover of cells and chemical components.
Someone here no doubt knows more about this than I do.
I know less- but I find it fascinating to think that there is a “fairly continuous turnover of cells and chemical components” in our bodies.
Bilirubin content in your blood work represents dead cells processed by your liver.
It’s also what colors your poop a brown color.
Not an expert either, but as a sometime woodworker I’ve come to know that the heartwood (the majority of the wood in older trees) is no longer alive, so no more turnover.
I did find this:
https://www.radiocarbon.com/old-wood-effect.htm
“When radiocarbon dating a piece of wood or charcoal, the event dated is the growth of the tree ring. Trees grow by the addition of rings, and these rings stop exchanging carbon with the biosphere once they are laid down. Thus, the radiocarbon age of a single tree’s heartwood and sapwood will not be the same with the innermost heartwood being significantly older than the sapwood.”
Thanks to all below for the info.
It is always a good day when I learn something.
Funny. I was just reading up on 14C dating two days ago for other purposes.
Cosmic rays generate stratospheric thermal neutrons by spalling nuclei. A thermal neutron will very likely be captured by atmosphere’s most abundant 14N (7P, 7N). The nucleus then ejects a proton and becomes 14C (6P, 8N), which oxidizes to become 14CO2. The 14C radioactive decay half life is 5730 years. The mechanism is beta decay whereby a neutron (a combination of an electron and a proton) spontaneously ejects the electron and converts to a proton. 14C==>14N.
Libbey won the Nobel in Chemistry for working out radiocarbon dating. His original paper radiocarbon dated two ancient wooden Egyptian sarcophagi whose dates were already known by the Pharaohs they contained.
Libbey’s method measured the beta decay events to estimate remaining 14C. Took a fairly long time and a large sample. Modern method uses accelerated mass spec (fast, small sample) to measure all the remaining 14C directly. Robust dating out to about 50,000 years now.
Vinos use of the very well established radiocarbon dating calibration curve to show low solar activity influence on pre-established Holocene cold periods is brilliant and very persuasive. And Holocene’s just two 14C half lives means very robust dating.
I agree it should follow that high solar activity implies warm periods even if NASA disagrees and we don’t exactly know why —although Vinos excellent book provides a very plausible mechanism hypothesis. This post provides very nice physical support followup. Kudos.
I was about to object to your stating thermal neutrons contributed to the 14N(n,p)14C reactions, thinking that (n,p) typically have a threshold energy (e.g. 10.2 MeV for 16O(n,p)16N). A quick bit of searching showed the thermal cross-section to be a bit above 1 barn with resonances occurring >100keV. This goes a long way to explaining why atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons led to a measurable increase in 14C.
I believe that Mr. Vinos has not proposed a specific mechanism for how rather small variations in solar activity causes relatively large variances in climate .. but neither have NASA and the warmunists explained let alone proved why such variances in solar activity DON’T affect climate … they simply assert that there is no effect.
What Mr. Vinos has argued rather effectively here is that there is a clear correlation between solar activity and prehistorical climate reconstructions that deserves investigation. Correlation is not causation, yet correlation deserves investigation.
For example, this analysis appears to suggest that the effects of variance in solar energy transfer may be about more than just the absolute change in solar energy input – that perhaps other mechanisms such as changes in the earth’s magnetic fields and related changes in cosmic energy flux could have an amplifying effect on solar energy retention, yet still triggered by seemingly small changes in solar irradiance. To use a chemistry metaphor, perhaps other factors may serve as geophysical catalysts.
The difference between warmunists and climate skeptics is that the former claim all useful knowledge about climate response that can ever be known is already known … while the latter says we don’t know everything that could be known, and what we don’t know could make a great deal of difference.
So which of these two sets of competing claims is scientific … and which is ideology? Seems pretty obvious.
Not in this post. In his book ‘Solving the Climate Puzzle’, with a Foreword from William Happer. What this post does is supply Holocene substance.
Correlation is not causation, but when correlation is not due to chance it indicates that:
For example, there is a lot of discussion over the Pleistocene correlation and if the increase in CO₂ causes the increase in temperature or the opposite when interglacials begin, but the truth is we know Milankovitch forcing causes the increase in temperature and the increase in CO₂.
The chances of randomly picking four 200-year period of 2% change in 14C out of 11,700 years and them coinciding with four major climate events of about 200 years out of a list of about eight is not very high.
And the causality in this case cannot be B->A or C->A&B because events on Earth cannot affect solar activity.
The proposed Bray cycle misses three major GSM and associated climate events in the last 3500 years. The cycle has no theoretical solar origin either.
The oceans can store heat for around a hundred years, so the extra irradiance over the last 50-100 years compared to the past 400 years, probably made the oceans warmer than they were.
https://lasp.colorado.edu/lisird/data/historical_tsi
That is the right idea.
_____________________________________________________________
And if you’re wrong? You know that government funded climate science is going to say exactly that, and all of your charts, tables & graphs (9) will never see the light of day except on venues like Watts Up With That, and there won’t be any public debate.
There needs to be a public debate, but it’s not about how much temperature change is in the future, but rather, is it the existential crisis of our times?
1. More rain is not a problem.
2. Warmer weather is not a problem.
3. More arable land is not a problem.
4. Longer growing seasons is not a problem.
5. CO2 greening of the earth is not a problem.
6. There isn’t any Climate Crisis.
SC, I think this western false climate alarm is slowly grinding to a halt by itself despite Biden, UK, BRD, and invested academia. There are four broad reasons for my ‘optimism’:
‘…I think this western false climate alarm is slowly grinding to a halt by itself…’
Man, I hope you’re right on this. I always found the solar connection persuasive, particularly the GCR / cloud cover mechanism of Svensmark and others. But they have sadly been effectively disappeared by consensus climate ‘science’. So now it’s a foot race between coming to our senses on CO2 alarmism (and the rest of the Left’s arsenal) and economic collapse.
Frank, I did my bit with earlier guest posts here and at Judith’s, plus my ebook Blowing Smoke. Don’t contribute guests posts much any more because not much interesting left to say. I still comment extensively here, often as pointers to the archives for newcomers.
Occasionally a comment will teach something ‘newish’, for example WE recent post on models where I pointed out they overcook ECS=x*TCR. EBM says x in range of 1.23-1.3. Models say x is 1.75.
In places like Germany, the more the economy collapses the more they will then come to their senses. In places like US, more likely we come to our senses before collapse—maybe NY and CA exceptions.
‘Don’t contribute guests posts much any more because not much interesting left to say.’
Rud, most everything you say here is interesting and appreciated…
Rud Istvan and Steve Case’s comments always give value to my morning coffee.
Thank you (-: Encouragement is always appreciated.
“And if you’re wrong? You know that government funded climate science is going to say exactly that”
But it’s up to the “government funded climate science” to prove it’s wrong since it’s a viable theory.
They don’t have to prove anything, if they say so, it’s so. The media doesn’t question what government science says.
You mean “contest the presented evidence and offer alternative observations or experiments”.
“Proving” smacks of “settled science” and “beliefs”.
In my opinion.
Sorry.
Reply meant for Joseph.
This is true. At least, not so far anyway.
When the Net Zero economies start crashing, then the media may pay a little more attention.
Steve, that used to be so. It gets more difficult to pretend as ‘media’ is changing (WUWT, X) while alarmist problems pile up.
Easy for Hansen to say to MSM in 1990 that Manhattan’s East Side Parkway would be under water in 10 years (2000) from sea level rise acceleration. Not so easy to say 24 years after 2000 when still not true. And not so easy to disappear Hansen having said it given internet’s Wayback machine and equivalents.
That’s not how science works. It’s up to the person who proposed a theory to prove it correct.
Otherwise it would be up to us to prove the theory of CO2 being the driver of climate wrong.
Correct with a little nit. It is also up to the person who proposed to exhaustively test to prove it is wrong (null hypothesis). The more time you try to prove it wrong and fail, the stronger the theory.
Theories really are never proven. They are experimentally supported and survive all attempts to disprove.
But it’s up to the “government funded climate science” to prove it’s wrong since it’s a viable theory.
At best it is a hypothesis, not a theory. And given a gross lack of analysis of alternatives, it is not even viable. Placing total control of the climate on 0.04% of the atmosphere (ignoring land and water in the process) for what is undeniably a complex and chaotic system skirts the definition of insanity.
Back in 1976 an official with the UN Environmental group when discussing the pending mini ice age said that while it was not known if CO2 was the cause (of global cooling) it was something that could be quantified and taxed.
Next up, Al Gore with his inconvenient truth propaganda, his formation of the Chicago exchange (cap and trade), his major contribution to the Kyoto Accord, and his push to get cap and trade laws passed in the US.
Then there are scores of statements for UN officials that this is not about the climate, it is about changing world economy, formation of the One World Order, and the destruction of “White Supremist Capitalism.”
We are at a precipice as stated by the UN Sec.Gen., but it has nothing to do with coal and oil, it has to do with we lemmings jumping off into the abyss.
I think you missed what I was saying when I say “it’s a viable theory”- I wasn’t talking about AGW- I was following up what Steve Case said when he said that the solar theory will be declared to be wrong by the government climate “scientists”. So I meant that it’s for them to prove it’s wrong since the solar theory is a viable theory, though it’s probably only part of the answer- along with many others. It’s possibly a contributing factor to the trivial climate change- which I happen to like very much.
You could add 7. There is no tipping point.
Tipping point (and precipice) is just “runaway greenhouse effect” repackaged for modern consumption.
It’s called “psycho linguistic programming”. It’s all part of effective propaganda technique . Monkey see, monkey do, but also monkey hear monkey believe.
There is a real ongoing debate, but Javier Vinos is not in it! He won’t debate, he pontificates.
What “ongoing debate”? Is Mickey Mann debating whether or not his hockey stick is valid?
Facts and evidence are unimportant compared to their feelings.
Facts and evidence are unimportant compared to their salaries.
and their paychecks.
When will we see this reported in the New York Times? They have a section labelled, “Climate and Environment.”
“There are many natural causes that change the climate, and what we need to know is whether the Sun is one of the main ones.”
True, but it would help if you could identify which ones are causing temperatures to rise whilst solar activity decreases.
The increase in CO2 would be the obvious cause, but that’s ignored here, with no alternative.
If the sun is having a large negative effect on temperatures, an obvious conclusion is that whatever is causing the warming is having a greater effect than observeres, which is being masked by the solar decline.
The increase since 1998 looks mainly caused by the 2016 El Niño and the Hunga Tonga eruption effects. These are temporary effects so we might see a decrease in temperature from now until at least 2035 when SC26 is scheduled to increase in activity.
Solar activity stopped decreasing at the SC24-25 minimum in December 2019, and it is now increasing. It should become more clear with SC26.
I’m not sure how you get that from your graph.
https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-18-at-2.51.47-PM.webp?ssl=1
The red 11 year average temperature has been going up at a more or less constant rate since the 1970s. How would events from 2016 and later have any effect on that before 2010?
I get that from the UAH temperature graph you can get in this page. The graph used in the article is from GISS, which I don’t endorse.
But the same thing applies to UAH.
There is a strong, long-term warming trend, notwithstanding ENSO fluctuations and volcanic activity.
And Spencer and Christie of UAH have stated that, at most, HT added hundredths of a degree to the observed warming in UAH.
The opinion of Spencer and Christie is just the opinion of Spencer and Christie. The evidence is a very unusual warming that even models can’t accommodate. And they are “hot models“.
“But the same thing applies to UAH.
There is a strong, long-term warming trend”
The UAH satellite chart shows a warming trend from 1979 (the beginning of the satellite era) to 1998, and then cooling from 1999 to 2015, and then warming from 2016 to the present.
Which one of the satellite-era warming trends are you referring to?
Ok. There is a slight warming trend, long term, but that does not prove the cause(s).
“Which one of the satellite-era warming trends are you referring to?“
The one that occurs through the entire 45 yr period obviously.
It really beggars belief that your cognitive dissonance prevents you from seeing the fact that natural variation moves the Earth’s heat around ON TOP of an overall rise in energy.
Get some graphics software and merge 2 trends – a linear rising slope, and a sine wave.
What do you see?
Something very like the above.
Moncktonesk analysis – the great snake-oil sellers wares evidenced in a denialist desperate to ABCD AGW (anything but CO2).
Tell me, as you know that the El Niño cycle periodically raises the Earth’s atmospheric temp, why would you expect that heat to stay around?
And not exit to space.
Point is the La Niña phase used to lower atmospheric temps, now, against the background anthro warming it can only paws.
In short you are expecting temps to linearly rise else it’s ABCD.
Tell me, in what world other than inside your head does a complex system smooth out all noise and produce a nice tidy effect. In this case your bizzarely expected straight rising line on the above graph.
This magnificent example of stupidity driven by ideological motivation
will extend no doubt to the usual retort here.
You’re welcome
“There is a strong, long-term warming trend”
Total and utter BS. !!
The only warming trend in UAH comes from EL Nino events
there are some 36 years total of ZERO WARMING
There is no evidence of any human causation whatsoever.. you keep proving that.
I didn’t see any reference to UAH in your article. You posted the GISS graph very prominently without saying you thought the data was wrong.
In any event the same issue arises using UAH data. It’s warming when the TSI is dropping. Even if you cherry pick the years between 1998 and 2015, where UAH is flatter than most other data sets, you still have to offer some evidence that natural causes stopped temperatures dropping in line with the TSI.
And if you do want to pin this all on El Niño’s, you need to explain how they can actually cause the earth to warm over decades, rather than just cause a brief transitory in temperatures.
I started by stating the IPCC and NASA position. I used the same graph NASA uses for that argumentation.
I don’t discuss that. But it doesn’t mean what you think it means if temperature is affected by multiple causes. The Sun could still be responsible for a fair amount of the 20th century warming.
The 2016 El Niño was very big. It added a lot of heat to where we measure the temperature and there wasn’t enough time to get it all out before the Hunga Tonga eruption took place.
“But it doesn’t mean what you think it means if temperature is affected by multiple causes. The Sun could still be responsible for a fair amount of the 20th century warming.”
And I’m not saying it necessarily wasn’t. My point is that if increasing solar activity was responsible for warming in the early 20th century, and something such as CO2 was responsible for increased warming in the last 50 years, despite decreasing solar activity, a consequence would be that we might be underestimating the warming effect of CO2.
The reason I’m asking is that often people who point out the effects of the sun on climate, are implying that this means CO2 is not the cause of recent warming, whereas I think that both might affect the climate. You accept that the sun is not the only cause of change, but seem to be reluctant to suggest CO2 as one of those other effects.
“The 2016 El Niño was very big.”
But only about as big as in 1998, and only lasts for a year or so. If you are claiming that El Niños could be responsible for the warming of the last 50 years, then I think that’s not a convincing argument.
No, I’m not reluctant to say that, as you believe. For all we know the increase in CO₂ must have caused some warming, although nobody knows how much, despite claims to the contrary. I just think it is not the dominant player here.
The El Niño we talk about was a very unusual two-year event, as was reported as an El Niño already in December 2014 by several agencies. It is known as the 2014-2016 El Niño event.
Ocean heat capacity and latencies. Not the speed of light like IR.
Good comment Javier.
Glad someone else recognises the effect of the three strong El Ninos in the satellite temperature.
Your third sentence does NOT follow. The rise in temperature from about 1920-1945 is indistinguishable from the rise from about 1975-2000, yet even IPCC AR4 SPM figure 4 said the former could not have been anthropogenic CO2. Natural variation from whatever causes did not magically stop in 1975. Your logic founders on the attribution problem.
and doesn’t this go to the heart of a null hypothesis about CO2 being the dominant influence in climate(s) behaviors?
If such “disturbing” climate behaviors were observed to occur when CO2 levels were unconcerning, how can currently observed “disturbing” behaviors be attributed to changed readings of CO2?
And then the temperatures cooled from the 1940’s through the 1970’s, while CO2 was increasing during that time.
So CO2 amounts increased while temperatures cooled for decades.
“And then the temperatures cooled from the 1940’s through the 1970’s, while CO2 was increasing during that time.”
And at the same time as solar activity was reaching a peak.
Small Solar activity increases get stored in the oceans and warm the oceans after decades of higher activity.
That is the right idea.
The cooling would have been more intense otherwise.
“The rise in temperature from about 1920-1945 is indistinguishable from the rise from about 1975-2000”
You are making my point. You can say the earlier rise was caused by increasing solar activity, but the recent rise happened when solar activity was decreasing for the most part. According to the graph, solar activity is now lower than it was in 1880.
Whatever “natural variation” that caused the warming trend of the last 50 years, must be stronger than solar influences, and stronger than whatever factors were present before 1945 to produce the similar warming rates.
“Whatever “natural variation” that caused the warming trend of the last 50 years, must be stronger than. . .whatever factors were present before 1945 to produce the similar warming rates.”
What do you mean by “stronger” here?
The oceans store up the small increases in solar activity so it takes many decades of increases to see a change in water temperature.
WRONG.. as usual…
… solar activity has still been quite high, and the absorbed solar energy has continued to climb.
Your comments are based on AGW mantra-fed ignorance.
“The increase in CO2 would be the obvious cause, but that’s ignored here, with no alternative.”
It’s not ignored by many here- only we see it as a small part of any climate change- or, at least we don’t know what the % is. To suggest that everyone here denies any impact from rising CO2 shows you’re not paying attention and you’re locked into the climate cult’s fantasy that if you don’t swallow he cool aid you an ignorant climate denier. I suggest nobody knows the truth on this issue. Everybody is guessing while striving or pretending that they’re the most rational.
Nailed it Joseph.
“It’s not ignored by many here”
By here – I mean in this article. It lists many possible reasons why temperature might not follow solar activity, but forgets that one. .
The purpose of the article is not to talk about all possible causes of the warming, it is to discuss whether or not solar changes have any impact on climate.
Your attempts to change the subject and to distract away from the topic at hand to what you want to talk about is rather pathetic.
Poor Bellboy… We know for certain it doesn’t follow CO2 levels.
Most of the atmospheric temperature data is zero trend between El Ninos.
Unless you have some whacky anti-science that shows CO2 causes El Ninos…
… you are just making empty gibbering noises. !
“Poor Bellboy”
Thanks for admitting you have no actual argument – keep it up.
“We know for certain it doesn’t follow CO2 levels.”
Actually, this argument is not valid because it does not say that the CO2 does not affect temperature, but that it is not the only factor in doing so, something we already knew because temperature responds to many factors such as El Niño, volcanoes, the polar vortex, or changes in the Earth’s orbit. There are many causes that change the climate, and what we need to know is whether CO2 levels is one of the main ones.
“Unless you have some whacky anti-science that shows CO2 causes El Ninos…”
Why would you think that? El Niños can’t create energy, they simply move energy to the surface, where it will radiate into space. If El Niños are getting hotter it’s because the world is getting hotter.
It won’t penetrate your religious dogma, but here’s a graph showing a simple model involving just CO2 and ENSO. ENSO can explain much of the year to year fluctuations, but you need something that explains the general upward movement, and if it’s not CO2, what is it?
Any of 1000 possibilities.
CO2 does not create energy. That would violate the laws of thermodynamics.
The real problem is pretending temperature and energy and IR are all the same. They are not. Eunice Newton Foote proved that back in the mid 1800s.
If you thoroughly read Javier’s article, you would understand that in the past, the temperature curve did not always follow solar output, even over the course of centuries.
But the claim is that this doesn’t matter as other factors would also have affected temperature. I agree, and it’s the same logic as why temperatures don’t always follow CO2.
My point is it would be helpful if you could identify what those other factors are.
And to think, just a couple of posts ago, you made the claim that the article completely ignores CO2 as a possible factor in temperature changes.
Understand that, geologically speaking, our understanding of natural variability over longer time scales is very limited. Our observational data doesn’t go back very far.
Yet the idiots in “climate science” talk CO2 and attempt to destroy western society with incredibly stupid Net-Zero nonsense..
…. and there you are saying it might not be CO2
That is a real turn-about..
Don’t let any of your AGW comrades hear you, you will be cancelled and excommunicated.
Thrown out of the AGW religious cult you desperately need to belong in, to make your pitiful life seem worthwhile.. to you..
No, I’m clear that CO2 is the most probable cause of the current warming. But I’m prepared to listen to alternative arguments. All I’m saying is that if you are so sure that COL2 has no effect, then you need to accept that something else is causing the warming, and it would be a good idea to figure out what it is. So far all I hear is postage stamps or El Niños. But nothing that could work in practice.
“The increase in CO2 would be the obvious cause”
If only you had any evidence !
Could also be the Big Bad Wolf huffing and puffing too much.
The oceans can store heat from solar input for over 100 years, or more. A little bit extra each day for a hundred years adds up.
This will be is the second time I’ve posted this exact response to you, the first one disappeared, and my same exact response was again deleted from your other comment.
“That is the right idea”.
Somebody at WUWT doesn’t like me telling the truth about TSI warming the ocean!!!
“With no alternative.”
Geothermal including vents and volcanoes both terrestrial and sub-surface (under sea), deforestation, urbanization and other land use, lunar and solar gravity, solar magnetics, orbital mechanics, cosmic radiation, clouds, pollution (real pollution including aerosols), population growth (98 F times 8 billion people), and energy production on a global scale.
About 35% of the energy released becomes electricity with the balance directly entering the atmosphere and water. Electricity is heat when used. Just coal burned in 2022 released enough thermal energy and electric heating to raised the lower 105 feet of the atmosphere by 1 C (globally).
Sorry, but the alternatives are discussed and evaluated and contrary to IPCC CO2, have the nul hypothesis test applied repeatedly.
Rising CO2 forcing cannot drive a warm AMO phase, but the AMO is always warmer during centennial solar minima.
The warm AMO is negative NAO driven, while rising CO2 forcing is expected to increase positive NAO states, which can only drive a colder AMO and Arctic.
Which proves that the weaker indirect solar forcing responsible for the negative NAO and warmer AMO since 1995, is easily overwhelming the rise in CO2 forcing.
Context is critical.
Vinos released an excellant video of this material 3 days ago that I got to from a comment on JoNova’s site. Shockingly, there are only 356 views, and it does not appear when I put Vinos’ name into the utube search.
Clearly it is being shadow banned. Can we help by sending it to our contacts?
So why not post the link?
I’m no scientist but I’d think that it’s actually quite a bit – a change of .1% would be about a half deg C?? That with some possible positive feedback? Just a wild ignorant guess. 🙂
The average temperature of the Earth is around 290K, and presumably the sun is responsible for almost all of that. Geothermal energy is responsible for a very small part of that temperature.
Presumably if solar energy increased by 0.1%, then this temperature would also increase by about 0.1%. In other words, an increase of about 0.29C.
Assuming that for a change that small, the difference between an exponential change and a linear change isn’t big enough to matter.
Possible, but it is unclear there is a purely linear relationship between 340 W/m^2 and 290K.
While there isn’t that much happening with TSI going up and down over a solar cycle, the Sun is spitting out a lot more material and photons during an active cycle compared to a calm cycle which influences a lot of things here on Earth.
The thermosphere temperature rises and falls as do the neutron counts lockstep with the sunspot counts. Solar flares send out high energy photons that interact with our ionosphere, ozone levels and even our health. CME’s pump a lot of energy into especially the polar regions. And the magnetic/electrical influence causes high and low pressure systems to change which can also impact relative strength and where they and the jet streams track. Additionally who knows exactly what it is doing to the magma beneath the crust but big earthquakes typically follow certain solar events, so it has to have some influence.
So looking at the macro events pointed out in the article, there can be a large number of changes that occur here on Earth that follows the Sun’s activity generally and over time matter. Cloud cover percent can change along with more/fewer cosmic rays and more or less UV hitting the surface depending on ozone. The list goes on.
“While there isn’t that much happening with TSI going up and down over a solar cycle,”
There isn’t much happening? Are you not paying attention on purpose here like Javier?
SST warmed practically continuously after 2011 until 2016, following the solar cycle’s TSI influence while solar activity was above the decadal ocean warming threshold.
The same exact mechanism is play during this solar cycle.
“Since the 1990s, solar activity has decreased while warming has continued.”
The SATIRE TSI plot from your second figure is among the poorest TSI reconstructions:
“The Sun changes the climate. And if we don’t know how it does it, we should study it.”
OK, Dr. Obvious, what do you think other people other than you have been doing for decades?
“Since low solar activity causes cooling, it stands to reason that high activity must cause warming.”
Fine, but I told you a few weeks ago that the 2023 warming was caused by the high solar activity of solar cycle 25, not the water vapor from HT-HH, and you didn’t retract your claim or address mine.
If you were up on the lastest sun-climate research, you would’ve known in 2022 that I predicted the 1.5°C ‘limit’ would be exceeded in this solar cycle from this cycle’s irradiance, which it did.
“…that solar activity cannot rise above the 20th century maximum.”
No one knows that for sure. Also, you don’t exhibit the knowledge that a series of smaller but still moderately large cycles can provide the same warming effect, due to your lack of understanding of the non-linear relationship between sunspots & irradiance, and the irradiance-climate influence.
“Now we can respond to the IPCC and NASA. Never mind that solar irradiance changes very little,”
Do you really think the IPCC or NASA is going to just capitulate to endless rhetorical assertions?
No Javier, you are just not in a position scientifically to respond to the IPCC or NASA!
You are not even in a position to respond to me, after I have shown you all the solution to climate change is found by adding those little irradiance changes over time. You still haven’t responded.
Did you know that I have brought my empirical sun-climate science in person to NASA scientists four times since 2018, some who have encouraged me to publish papers and a book?
“The Sun’s activity can stay high or go down, but it cannot go up, so the warming should not accelerate and should not be dangerous.”
You show no evidence or theory that solar warming can’t accelerate, nor be dangerous at times.
“But my model predicts that solar activity in the 21st century will be similar to that of the 20th century. It also predicted that the current solar cycle, the 25th, would have more activity than the previous one, and it was right.”
Your sunspot model is guess work run amok. That you predicted SC25 to be larger than SC24, the lowest cycle in 100 years was trivial, and you should know that.
The 20th century had the Solar Modern Maximum, which you know I fleshed out of the sunspot data before you did, where the sunspot number averaged 108.5 for 70 years from 1935 to 2004.
You stated in this article this was “in the top 10% of the last 11,000 years.” [Solanki etal, 2004]
So, what is your reason unusually high 20st century solar activity will continue through the 21st?
“…if much of the 20th century warming is due to the Sun, then there is no climate emergency.”
There is no climate emergency regardless of cause, and emissions didn’t drive climate change.
I’m betting eventually my major scientific findings will be plagiarized without recognition by you claiming someday that TSI had to cause the 20th century climate change via absorbed solar radiation in the ocean, which accumulated heat, as I’ve shown the science community since 2014.
If you can’t say the truth about how the climate changed vis-a-vis the sun’s TSI, you’re not helping.
Bob, perhaps your theory on 110 yrs of warming is correct. Sober studies outside otherwise doctrinaire “settled (political) science” arrived at ~0.6°C/century of warming (all causes). The hyped crisis forecasts for the first decade of the 21st century proved to be, on average, 300% too high (upper-bound 600% too high!), a self-inflicted total falsification of the CO2 control knob theory. Your theory would indicate that the sun is responsible for more than half the warming. Fair enough.
In such a messy science, you and Xavier are as close to agreement as its possible to get! You are working on different scales entirely. He is claiming that over the long haul of the entire Holocene, independent lines of evidence seem incontrovertibly to support the sun as a principal actor in climate change. He modestly admits he doesn’t know how it works, but that is definitely a ripe target for research. Fair enough.
Its also fair enough if Xavier hasn’t accepted your work as the answer to how the sun does it? Longterm significant solar changes he talks about are 1500yr cycles. Bob, surely in such long periods you wouldn’t expect one to aggregate 11 yr solar cycles and employ the SB equation. Sun’s heat gets radiated to space daily. This lost heat would even diminish your 110 yr ‘accumulated’ 11yr cycles heat.
“Your theory would indicate that the sun is responsible for more than half the warming.”
No. My graphic showed the sun is responsible for 100% of the warming. It’s physics!
“In such a messy science, you and Xavier are as close to agreement as its possible to get!”
Don’t you or anyone else confuse my good empirical results with Javier’s handwaving.
“Its also fair enough if Xavier hasn’t accepted your work as the answer to how the sun does it?”
Javier is too ignorant to realize he hasn’t provided the reason why he’s right or I’m wrong.
He doesn’t understand my work, #1 because he isn’t very good at math, and #2 he is too proud to accept he is wrong and misleading everyone.
At this posting, there are at least eight people equally as lost and unable. Any more?
“Sun’s heat gets radiated to space daily. This lost heat would even diminish your 110 yr ‘accumulated’ 11yr cycles heat.”
What you didn’t recognize is my system accounts for this daily cooling as well, so your assessment is wrong. In fact my original premise was the sun loses heat to space every day that must be replenished otherwise the ocean and climate cool off. That idea was the genesis of my solar threshold system of climate change.
This study depends heavily on the Marcott reconstruction, or to be fair, an unspecified reconstruction which Javier did using the Marcott proxies.
Before getting much further into this question, let me suggest that people read Steve McIntyres 17 posts about the Marcott reconstruction. They are here. I suggest that your read them in order from the bottom up, then do the same after pushing the “Newer posts” button at the top of the page.
TL;DR version? Steve discusses a host of problems with the Marcott reconstruction, none of which seem to have been discussed or corrected by Javier.
There’s another issue. I cannot replicate his radiocarbon dating calibration curve. Unfortunately, he hasn’t provided a link to his data. Here’s his curve;
However, I find the following:
Hmmm …
Finally, the radiocarbon calibration curve is affected by things other than solar strength. There’s a good discussion of these issues here.
Best to all,
w.
How I made the reconstruction has been posted previously here and at Judith Curry’s blog and published in my books. It is very simple. Instead of just averaging the proxies, I first converted the temperature of each proxy to anomaly with respect to its own mean. That way the variability is better preserved. That’s all, and using the original dates of the proxies, not the modifications done by Marcott.
I’ll keep using that reconstruction, however imperfect, until a better one comes along. It has the advantage of being published in Science. Why would anyone trust better my own reconstruction? Glacier analysis and the presence of most abrupt climatic events validates this reconstruction over other ones. But I’ll be happy to listen to your suggestions.
Regarding the real calibration curve, It is shown in the eighth figure. Here you have a blown up showing the Homer Minimum 2,700 years BP:
Thanks, Javier. I fear you have not dealt with the large number of problems with the Marcott dataset as laid out in detail by Steve McIntyre. And claiming that it must be valid because it was published in Science? For shame, you know better than that.
And I don’t understand your claim about the CO2 calibration curve. The new graphic you posted doesn’t even cover the same time period as the one I discussed. Where did the data for the period 0-450 years (presumably BP) shown in your graphic that I reposted in my comment come from?
Thanks,
w.
I don’t have to deal with Marcott’s reconstruction problems. It is not my job. Perhaps Steve can publish a better one and I will use it. And I don’t claim it is valid because it is published in Science. You keep raising strawman arguments.
Being published means it has been accepted by the journal editor and the referees, and it means I don’t have to deal with cherry-picking accusations. Whoever wants to criticize that reconstruction should address the criticism to Shawn Marcott. His email address is in the paper. So, go ahead.
As I said, the reconstruction is IRRELEVANT to the conclusions of the work.
The graph you refer too is a simplified cartoon so people understand what happens to the calibration curve when solar activity changes. It doesn’t represent any 400 years period. As usual, trying to dismiss my work you make a red herring out of a nothingness. The calibration curve is displayed for the entire Holocene in another figure.
Thanks, Javier. The Hockeystick was published in Nature. Do you use that as well? And if not … why not? I mean “it has been accepted by the journal editor and the referees”, so does that mean we get to ignore its obvious flaws and take it as gospel?
I’m sorry, but that argument won’t wash.
Next, if Marcott is “irrelevant” to your post, why is it mentioned five times in the text, illustrated in three of the graphics, and listed as the only one of five references that is a temperature reconstruction? Seems kinda relevant to me. Without that, you have very little.
Finally, if your graph of the Calibration Curve is a “cartoon”, it should definitely have been labeled as such. I’m not trying to “make a red herring out of a nothingness”. I foolishly assumed that if you put in a cartoon you’d have called it a cartoon, instead of calling it a “Calibration Curve”. So I did what scientists do—I tried to replicate it, and couldn’t.
I do like your idea that is shown in your cartoon, however. I’m taking a look now at IntCal20 to see what it reveals.
Regards,
w.
No, I don’t use the Hockey stick. But not because it contains errors, but because it is contradicted by piles of evidence. I don’t see that happening to Marcott’s reconstruction. You don’t like it, fine, don’t use it. Every reconstruction has issues and problems. How are you going to choose? Are you going to make your own to your liking? Scientists work with the best data available. they do not wait for the perfect data to come by. I am still waiting for your suggestion of a better reconstruction than Marcott’s.
If you are capable of critical analysis you should see that the argument of a past coincidence of major grand solar minima and major climate events rests only on their respective existence and their temporal coincidence, and nothing else. How I present the story is my business and if you don’t like it I couldn’t care less.
Same with the figures I present for illustrative purposes and how they are labelled.
Every past solar activity reconstruction beyond sunspot records is based on cosmogenic isotopes deviations. I prefer to show the radiocarbon calibration curve and point to the big deviations made by grand solar minima than use a solar reconstruction, because everybody knows we can trust the radiocarbon curve made by hundreds of scientists unrelated to climate than a solar activity reconstruction from some scientists. But that is a personal preference. Every solar reconstruction does show those four grand solar minima.
“…you should see that the argument of a past coincidence of major grand solar minima and major climate events rests only on their respective existence and their temporal coincidence, and nothing else.”
There’s nothing unique about Javier’s claims of solar cooling.
A man named Salvatore made these points and others for several years here at WUWT, the same arguments Javier uses, before Javier wrote his first article. The difference is Salvatore didn’t impose on everyone over and over again with article after article that just keeps saying essentially the same thing about the coincidence of cold eras from low solar forcing. although he did in the comments section.
I remember people getting annoyed by him after a while, as he couldn’t get past these simple associations by moving forward in empiricism.
History is repeating itself here, as I see Javier repeating Salvatore’s ideas and mistakes, at the same time Javier is not providing any reliable science to show how solar warming/cooling actually happens.
“How I present the story is my business and if you don’t like it I couldn’t care less.”
Yea, Javier, some of us know you live in a self-centered bubble.
The truth hurts.
Your statement is not correct. This study depends heavily on the existence of four major climatic events at the specified dates, which is confirmed by a host of scientific publications on those events, and on the existence of major changes in 14C production at the specified events, which is confirmed by the radiocarbon calibration curve.
However hard you try you won’t be able to disprove those solid facts.
The climate reconstruction is there for illustrative purposes but it could be entirely wrong and it would not affect the least the conclusions from the study.
Javier, why don’t you put the same effort into answering my questions?
Because he’s incapable!
People who reply to themselves or answer their own questions are odd. Are they incapable of relating more than one idea in a single post? It would seem so.
“How we know that the sun changes the Climate.” Did someone say the sun does not change the climate?
The claim being debunked is the CO2 and only CO2 changes the climate.
Then you are debunking a strawman.
Satellite measurements of top of the atmosphere TSI since the 197-s have shown that sunspot counts are incompetent proxies for TTOA TSI
The satellites also show a slight TOA TSI decline since the late 1979s
That means TOA TSI changes were NOT the cause of the post 1975 global warming
In adition most the warming was at night, unaffected by sunlight. Arctic warming was entirely in the low solar energy winter months, for one example.
And there was no stratosphere warming that would result from mpre solar energy. There was stratosphere cooling that would result from greenhouse warming.
Reconstructions using sunspots are meaningless based on what we now know about sunspots
This article did not disprove NASA and IPCC at all.
The author is a sophisticated Warming is Mainly Natural Fan when most of the evidence supports manmade warming.
His claims are either weak, based on sunspots, or more speculation than fact. Solar possibilities that need mre study. I agree with that.
The focus on manmade causes of climate change is not justified, when so much more needs to be learned about clouds and the sun
“The Sun changes the climate.”
Vinos
So far there are no measured correlations of TSI with a measured global average temperature (GAT).
There is no indication of an 11 year GAT cycle that matches an 11 year sunspot cycle.
For several hundred years there is no evidence of a TSI – GAT correlation.
Unfortunately, using sunspot counts for TSI, and surface measurements for GAT, are both very questionable data
But we do have satellite GAT and satellite TOA TSI since 1979 and they say there is no correlation.
Weighing in late, but I disagree with your comment on several grounds. Which is not to say I fully agree with Vinos, only that you fail to disprove him.
So there are forces far beyond CO2 most surely at work. I have no problem with posts/papers (ok, papers few because of journal bias) trying to explain these other natural forces. Enjoy trying to understand them and their scientific credibility.
And an additional snipe at an old mostly friend who critically posted upstream because found no direct solar influence. Using the Marcott stuff from his thesis is legit. McIntyre criticisms were of two general types (I read all 17 before writing my Climate Etc two critiques: unreliable proxies (alkenones) and coretop redating. Use only the proxies from his thesis, you remove the latter provable scientific misconduct generating Marcott’s hockey stick which got him as an unknown just graduated PhD published in Science. ( No incentive there, /s.) The former is just legit Steve criticized inherent paleoproxy uncertainty.
“The only problem is that the production of carbon-14 by cosmic rays is not constant.”
Another potential problem is that some plants (I don’t know if or how many types of trees) can “filter out”
CO2 where the “C” is Carbon-14?
(I think the marsh mallow plant is one of them?)
‘Filtering out 14C’. True in general. No idea abouto marsh mallows.
Photosynthesis favors the lightest carbon isotope 12C for obvious energetic reasons. That is why Fossil fuel sequestration enriched atmospheric 13C over hundreds of millions of years, and why its recent ratio decline proves the Keeling curve is anthropogenic from fossil fuels. (Lots of stuff easily available on line.)
But, it isn’t absolute. What Libby proved, resulting in a Nobel prize, was that there was enough photosynthetic radioactive 14C organic uptake despite its higher molecular weight to use its known beta decay to fairly closely date ancient organic samples using known (otherwise also dated) sample calibration curves accounting for natural variations in 14C given slightly variable sun activity on causative cosmic rays. Given stratigraphic sedimentology and archeology, those calibration curves stretch back remarkably far millennia. Certainly to before the Holocene. Which is all Vinos required for this post.
So … carbon 14 dating needs to include, maybe a larger, margin of error than it currently has?
Expand that to carbon dating of the animals that ate those plants?
There is a lot we assume to be true that “just ain’t so”.
But we move on with the best (not BEST) we know.
I doubt that a change in 13C can prove the CO2 increase is human caused. But it would be fun to look at such a claim if you care to point to one. I am especially interested in how they handle the very short residence time of CO2 including ours. More likely they are observing the effect of our emissions increasing which no one disputes that I know of.
There are numerous on line data references available. Just go look.
Javier Vinos:
You made the comment that, since the sun is responsible for our temperatures, there is no concern of higher temperatures because the temperature of the sun cannot increase (if I understood you correctly). This is offered as good news.
Unfortunately, Earth’s temperatures CAN continue to rise, even if the temperature of the sun remains unchanged.
This is because their is a layer of industrial SO2 aerosols in our atmosphere which reduces the intensity of the solar radiation striking the Earth’s surface. In 1979, these emissions totaled 139 million tons, and, due to Clean Air legislation to reduce SO2 emissions, and efforts to ban the burning of fossil fuels, SO2 aerosol emissions fell to 73 million tons by 2022, a decrease of 66 million tons. Since decreased atmospheric pollution will cause temperatures to rise, this has to be the cause of our modern (since 1980) warming, rather than CO2..
This decrease is obvious from satellite Chem map images of SO2 aerosols, available since 1980.
Unless all actions that reduce SO2 aerosols in our atmosphere are halted, temperatures will continue to rise (although temporary reprieves due to volcanic SO2 may occur)
I do not believe we know the average global temperature over 100 year periods, thousands of years ago, to tenths of a degree as the graphs claim. The claim is preposterous.
The graph doesn’t claim that. The units are Z-score, or standard deviation units with respect to the mean, a measure of deviation from the mean.
z-scores are only as good as the data used to calculate them. That is what measurement uncertainty is for. Anomalies only reduce the z-scores because they are at least an order of magnitude smaller than the absolute temperature values.
We just don’t know the data from 1,000’s of years ago to obtain the necessary accuracy let alone uncertainty.
The oceans can probably also store up a small amount of extra heat from increased irradiance each year, for a hundred years or more, to make a measurable difference, like the warmer oceans we see today.
Very nice Javier.
Starting in 1979 we no longer have to compare INACCURATE proxies of solar energy with INACCURATE surface statistics of the global average temperatures (GAT)
Surface GAT initially showed a lot of global cooling from 1940 to 1975 … but then in the 1990s almost al the cooling “disappeared”
Since 1979 we have had satellite MEASUREMENTS for TOA TSI and GAT
First satellite data lesson:
Sunspot counts were not accurate as a proxy for TOA TSI
Second satellite measurement lesson
Satellite data compiled by UAH reflected significantly less global warming than surface data with its never verified infilling and other questionable “adjustments”
Conclusion for post-1979 warming using actual measurements rather than some inaccurate proxies compared with other inaccurate proxies:
TOA TSI did not cause any warming after 1979
Any claim that TSI or some other solar variable caused warming and cooling in past centuries MUST explain why TOA TSI after 1979 did NOT correlate positively with GAT. The actual correlation was negative. Using sunspot counts the negative correlation was larger.
Sunspot counts
Rising from 1940 to 1960
GAT falling
Falling from 1980 to 2023
GAT rising rapidly
“Any claim that TSI or some other solar variable caused warming and cooling in past centuries MUST explain why TOA TSI after 1979 did NOT correlate positively with GAT. “
I explained this SN-temperature divergence as recently as on Dr. Curry’s posting of this same article. The sun still warms the ocean and climate during declining solar cycles decadally as long as TSI exceeds the decadal ocean warming threshold, shown as the red line in the graphic below.
The SN-temperature divergence grows from the accumulating absorbed solar radiation in the ocean during the declining cycles while TSI exceeds the threshold.
Analogy: you can still keep the water boiling in the pot after turning down your stove from “high”.
Analogy: you can still build wealth if your income declines as long as income exceeds expenses.
Javier hasn’t addressed this issue because he doesn’t understand solar forcing the right way.
funny how the Klimat Change Corp argue amplification of direct CO2 effect for significant change, while deny amplification of solar effect