By P Gosselin on 10. December 2025
In a candid interview with the German language Weltwoche, astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon asserts that the sun is the overwhelmingly dominant force driving Earth’s climate, not human-emitted CO2.
Image: WeltWoche
His decades of research into solar and stellar physics lead him to the controversial conclusion that focusing on regulating CO2 is misguided,
“You can’t make laws against the sun,” he argues.
Dr. Soon states that the sun provides 99.99% of the energy that powers our weather and climate, and satellite data confirms that solar radiation is not a constant, but fluctuates, particularly in the UV and X-ray ranges. He contends that temperature patterns over the last 150 years correlate much better with solar activity fluctuations than with CO2 levels. According to Soon’s analysis, the CO2 signal is below the detection limit as a primary climate driver.
Challenging the CO2 narrative
Soon dismisses the “CO2 panic” as lacking solid scientific basis and highlights the beneficial role of the gas in promoting photosynthesis and causing measurable global greening since the 19th century. He points to natural climate events like the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715), a period of minimal sunspots that coincided with the Little Ice Age, as robust evidence for a direct link between solar activity and climate shifts.
Why the CO2 focus? The “Iron Triangle”
When asked why the CO2 narrative dominates, Dr. Soon claims it is politically motivated, citing the fact that taxes and regulations can be imposed on CO2, but not on the sun. He describes an “Iron Triangle Effect” where politics funds, science delivers, and media amplifies an alarmist consensus, often marginalizing critics and favoring specific models to create an impression of certainty where uncertainty exists.
Politicized sicence
According to Soon: “Unfortunately, many scientific institutions have adopted an alarmist consensus in recent decades. Critics are marginalized. Climate policy is increasingly serving economic and ideological goals, not objective research. However, there is one positive sign: Bill Gates recently realized that the climate cannot be controlled by regulating CO2. Instead, he now wants to focus on adaptation—on mitigating human suffering from extreme cold or heat. That is a welcome development.”
He warns that the political contamination narrows scientific discourse and replaces objective research with ideological and economic goals.
Addressing criticisms and recommending new priorities
Soon rejects claims of being funded by the oil industry, stating his funding comes from diverse sources and is currently supported by voluntary donations to his independent group, Ceres-Science. The claims of oil industry funding are meant to distract from the science. He emphasizes that the quality of work, not the source of funding, should be the focus.
For future climate research, Dr. Soon recommends:
- Focusing on long-term, calibrated measurements in rural areas.
- Ensuring open data and code for reproducibility.
- Conducting targeted experiments on the stratosphere, cloud formation, and radiation balance.
- Honestly testing competing hypotheses instead of confirming favored models.
His advice for policymaking is simple: Prioritize realism and resilience. This means adapting infrastructure, strengthening flood protection, investing in technology, and most importantly, exercising humility before the complexity of nature.
He concludes that since we can’t make laws against the sun, policy must be realistic, intelligent, and humane.
Full interview in German here.
There is nothing controversial about what Dr. soon has said here. He is spot on, good job Dr. Soon.
For quick access, ClimateDepot has the full English translation of the interview here. Deep down in the interview, Dr Soon mentions that accusations of him being ‘on the payroll of Big Oil’ come from ..
That Kert Davies, the guy I covered in my Feb 2015 WUWT guest post, who was recently exposed in FOIA-released emails out of the 2015-era New York Attorney General’s office as part of an effort to create the first “ExxonKnew” lawsuit. Since Davies is quoted ever-more frequently by biased news outlets for input about ‘industry-funded disinformation campaigns,’ I put together a Background post on the man in case Federal investigators / objective, unbiased reporters / energy company defendant lawyers need info on him that can be viewed in one page.
Yes Bob, also look at the article by Niklov & Zeller which using NASA and other space data shows the composition of the atmosphere has nothing to do with surface temperature. A note to Roy Spencer & Willis the article was about dimensional analysis which was extensively written in the introduction of the article and in the summary. Dimensional analysis is an engineering concept which as the article says few scientists have any understanding. It is about finding the best relationship between variables. A well known relationship found by dimensional analysis in fluid dynamics is between the Reynolds number and friction factor to determine pressure loss in pipes. Niklov and Zeller found that surface temperature could best be related only to the pressure of the atmosphere at the surface and the distance from the sun. The CO2 in the atmosphere other than in the case of Venus resulting in higher surface pressure has no effect. On Earth the CO2 is a trace gas so has no effect. On Titan which has CH4 in the atmosphere that also no effect.
Willie for UN Secretary-General!
Soon!
Well then he should explain what exactly is wrong with the consensus CO2 narrative. There is plenty of subject matter to be discussed. However, you can not simply skip that discussion and say it is the sun instead.
I understood he already had –
Dr. Soon states that the sun provides 99.99% of the energy that powers our weather and climate, and satellite data confirms that solar radiation is not a constant, but fluctuates, particularly in the UV and X-ray ranges.
He contends that temperature patterns over the last 150 years correlate much better with solar activity fluctuations than with CO2 levels.
According to Soon’s analysis, the CO2 signal is below the detection limit as a primary climate driver.
Challenging the CO2 narrativeSoon dismisses the “CO2 panic” as lacking solid scientific basis and highlights the beneficial role of the gas in promoting photosynthesis and causing measurable global greening since the 19th century.
He points to natural climate events like the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715), a period of minimal sunspots that coincided with the Little Ice Age, as robust evidence for a direct link between solar activity and climate shifts.
These are claims, not evidence. What I mean is something far more concrete, like this..
Regrettable Regressions – a Reanalysis..or how “Climate Science” has its eyes wide shut on the statistical blunder that generates false positive feedbacks
Soon and others have published analyses that point to CO2 being an insignificant factor. Perhaps this is why there is no empirical evidence that it is a major forcing for climate change as required by the AGW hypothesis. In a recent one Soon et al found that the anthropogenic CO₂ signal is either undetectable or statistically non-robust in the observational temperature record.
Another example is Munshi’s statistical study which found that there is no detectable CO2-temperature or emission-CO2 relationship in the observational record after detrending (most studies do not detrend).
Complimenting these studies are numerous statistical and observational studies which found that CO2 lags temperature (e.g., Humlum (2013), Koutsayannis et al (2022+)). This undermines the AGW hypothesis and associated policies that are supported by the wrong causality and, as Munshi notes, false attribution.
Nice post!
You have no understanding of the essential physics do you ?
Can you follow this answer from Grok :
Does a radiantly heated gray , ie: flat spectrum , ball come to the same temperature as a black ball ?
https://x.com/i/grok/share/hdvZNCjYz0twizt9c1rH0tDna
Lunatic cult followers believe that adding CO2 to air makes thermometers hotter! How insane is that?
Nothing lunatic about that. The question is just how much.
“These are claims, not evidence.”
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Where is the evidence that CO2 is the driver? Right now it is just a claim. There is *NO* evidence it is a major driver, it’s not even a measurable claim.
And if that argument would do, climate change would not be a thing. It appears it does not. That is why better evidence is needed to stop it. Agreed?
You jest, surely. Climate is the statistics of weather observations. What is your definition of a “thing”? Are you as stupid as you appear?
At best, current CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere may cause a 1% variation in the energy balance of the planet. Given the huge numbers involved that 1% is unmeasurable; much less than the accuracy of our best measuring devices. And the results of the ongoing ARGO ocean heat content measurements indicate less than a 1% change in the planet’s heat balance.
The consensus CO2 narrative is just that … a speculative political, NGO and crony capitalist money-grabbing narrative, not science. Climate hysteria is scooped up by the Leftist media to push political and economic agendas.
We are talking different things here. You name your beliefs, like Soon does. Me however, I am talking about scrutinizable evidence.
Where’s the scrutinisable evidence for carbon dioxide being responsible for climate change?
I do not say there was..
And now the semantical twirling begins.
You do not say there wasn’t, either.
Adding CO2 to air does not make thermometers hotter.
True. What you said was …
He doesn’t need to. The late Dr S Fred Singer covered that problem back in 2004, as did Dr Richard Lindzen (days before Naomi Oreskes’ 100% consesnsus study was published), and Lord Monckton covered that more recently. Consensus opinion has never once validated a science conclusion in the entire history of the Scientific Method. Albert Einstein said as much when he said 100 men could not prove him right, but one man could prove him wrong. The ‘science consensus’ for centuries claimed the continents were too big to move. Then essentially the deep dives which showed the spreading Mid-Atlantic blew that ‘consensus’ right out of the water.
These are arguments, not falsifications..
Of course you don’t. You don’t say it does, either. Typical slimy refuge of the ignorant and gullible cultist trying to appear intelligent.
Grow a backbone, laddie. Be forthright and upstanding – express your beliefs.
Look to/”scrutinize” paleoclimatology reconstructions of Earth’s lower atmospheric temperatures versus atmospheric CO2 concentrations to discover the objective evidence that shows, under real world conditions, that atmospheric CO2 does not drive atmospheric temperature . . . in fact, the preponderance of objective evidence indicates just the opposite . . . that temperature likely drives atmospheric CO2 concentration!
True
Adding CO2 to air does not make thermometers hotter.
Oh dear, “scrutinizable evidence.”
🙁
No, Dr. Soon is stating scientific facts, you are peddling religious dogma.
Which dogma? That feedbacks are negative?
Feedbacks to what ???
Adding CO2 to air does not make thermometers hotter.
Evidence enough?
It’s the sun, stupid.
There is no evidence that CO2 plays more than a very minor role in temperature.
Models are not evidence.
English is obviously not your strong point, but then again, neither is science or physics.
Adding CO2 to air does not make thermometers hotter. Heat does.
A 1% change in the temperature corresponds to an increase of 2.8C which is on the high end of what most models predict. So it is good to see that you agree with the consensus.
The term “1% change in temperature” is a meaningless phrase.
And not remotely what David said.
So if the temperature is 15C for this planet, and it changes by 1%, that means the temp goes up by 0.15C to 15.15C
Where does the 2.8C come from?
Heat. Are you that stupid?
Beat me to it.
Absolute zero is – 273.
Plus 15 degrees =288
288 x1%= 2.8
+2.8C would make it minus 10C now where I live. Bring it on, please.
But don’t all the models express temps in degrees C?
LMAO. Absolute zero 0K. 0°C = 273K. The claim was 2.8°C.
2.8°C / 0.01 = 280°C
You might say that 280K x 0.01 = 2.8K but that isn’t the claim. Plus, 280K –> 7°C. The numbers simply don’t add up.
Good you outline the niveau here.. 😉
2.8K is not on the high end. Average model projection now is above 3.5K, for ECS. For total Earth system sensivity (ESS) in the long run, consensus science assumes something like 7-10K for a doubling of CO2.
Completely worthless, figments of deluded imaginations. “Climate scientists” get paid to write fairytales, provide completely pointless “scenarios” and “projections”. Even the ignorant and gullible like yourself can’t find any use for these “models”.
Adding CO2 to air doesn’t make thermometers hotter. That’s fact, no modelling needed.
“Well then he should explain what exactly is wrong with the consensus CO2 narrative.”
He (& others) have explained exactly what’s wrong with the consensus CO2 narrative.
Your inability to understand is your problem !
There is no consensus in science, only empirical truths.
He says it was the sun, and because of it, it is not CO2. That is the whole argument.
Well, if you point at the 99.999% elephant in the room who is responsible for the huge pile of poo on the floor,
while others blame the 0.01% Mosquito for that pile,
you have a 100% argument(in the whole chain of weather events the sun is always at the very core.
No sun = no weather at all)
You are a bit loose with the numbers. Anyway, Soon still does not tell us what is wrong with the CO2 narrative, he only suggests an alternative explanation..
Your religious dogma is not founded in reality, that is what is wrong with your CO2 narrative. Your religion is as unattached from reality as christianity and islam. All you have is Faith. Oh, and computer models that cannot “model” a 72 hour time-frame forward or backward much less decades either way.
The CO2 narrative is based on erroneous conjectures… not science.
Any possible effect of atmospheric CO2 is absolutely immeasurable against the bulk energy transport within the atmosphere.
The equivalent of a flea bite on an elephant’s rear end.
Doesn’t need to. Adding CO2 to air does not make thermometers hotter.
I would have thought that by now, the fact that any modern warming caused by increasing CO2 cannot be separated from natural variability to be obvious to just about everybody.
If 99.99% of the temperature changes of the planet over time can be explained by the sun, that does not leave much room for CO2 to be the climate driver.
Others have pointed out the problems with the belief that CO2 is the primary driver.
What’s wrong with the co2 narrative?
Please – you have hundreds of millions of years proving the co2 powerswrong.
20* higher during the Cambrian explosion and no runaway effect.
And a planet that actually cooled down when co2 levels were supposedly at 20%+ and almost all water was vapor( but what are 500* higher co2 and h20 levels in the atmosphere when you are a real believer? ).
Then go to Mars with 95% co2 and take a look at the thermometer.
On top the current global temperatures are 10 degrees+ cooler than the mean of the last 500 mio years.
Sorry to tell your well hidden narcissism that you are not the guy who is beating all the odds by being born in the very era of the past billion years when the artificial apocalypse is gonna happen.
For that “consensus science” has the early faint sun theory..
You dimwit. Fools like Carl Sagan implied that the Sun heated an Earth which was created in a cold state – not glowing hot, no molten surface. James Hansen and others seem ignorant and gullible enough to believe likewise.
What about you?
I think you need more intel on Soon and what he has said over the decades to make that claim.
Maybe he doesn’t believe he needs to explain what is wrong with the consensus position on CO2 because he has no use for consensus in science.
Or, maybe his explanations about the politicization of climate science is sufficient to draw scrutiny on something “deemed” a consensus by politicians.
Or maybe he wasn’t asked the question.
I think I am pretty familiar with his talking points. I must admit, I do not recall reading a paper of his, but I have listened to hours of his presentations / interviews.
Adding CO2 to air does not make thermometers hotter.
There is no measured scientific evidence that CO2 causes warming..
And you are ignorant and gullible enough to believe him? You might as well believe a faker, fraud, scofflaw and deadbeat like Michael,Mann, PhD, “Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania.”
How impressive is that?
I am impressed with neither. And I have the cards to prove it..
https://greenhousedefect.com/basic-greenhouse-defects/how-to-hockey-stick
That seems like a link to an anonymous dimwit. I suppose you can believe the anonymous dimwit, and exclaim “He says . . .”.
Facts are more impressive.
Well, “science”, as is practiced today, does indeed heavily involve consensus . . . mainly to facilitate obtaining funding and to enable publication of research “findings”.
That being said, it is absolutely true that nowhere in any credible description of The Scientific Method is the word “consensus” to be found.
Furthermore, “science” includes much theoretical work where “empirical truths” are not present or even possible to obtain. As but one example, the origin of the Big Bang.
So, “science”, not science. Agreed.
I have CO2 bottles. When I open it in my greenhouse with all the vents closed the temperature does not go up. But when the sun shines I have to open the vents because the temperature really goes up if I dont. So there you have it.
Bottles are not quite a proxy for the atmosphere..
You must understand what you read, and answer later.
My advice to you and others..
Adding CO2 to air does not make thermometers hotter.
Funny, you still have not understood what doonman said, have you.! 🙂
Hint: it was absolutely nothing to do with bottles being the atmosphere.
Adding CO2 to air does not make thermometers hotter.
Adding CO2 to air allows the Sun to be very slightly more effective at making surfaces warmer….is the correct interpretation….adding CO2 from a pressurized bottle in an enclosed space is probably going to cool the air down due to CO2 expansion.
No it doesn’t. The airless Moon surface reaches 127 C or so, for example. Ignorant and gullible cultists immediately start banging on about “. . . but, averages . . . “, in an attempt to turn fiction into fact.
Adding CO2 to air does not make thermometers hotter.
Well, that’s meaningless word salad, isn’t it?
Because it is the Sun, stooopid. And the only “greenhouse gas” that matters at all is water vapor.
Hmmm….at surface H2O is about 20,000 ppm, while at Top of troposphere, 12 km up, H2O is about 5 ppm while CO2 is still 400 ppm. This change in column water concentration and different IR absorption between H2O and CO2 causes overall GASEOUS CO2 to be about 20% of GASEOUS H2O’s greenhouse effect. Beyond that, the effect of evaporating Water and the local reflection and shade of clouds have much more effect on surface temperature than greenhouse gases.
For example, water evaporation removes about 80 watts from the surface…which is about 20 times the amount of calculated CO2 forcing since the mid 1800’s….
Not to mention that a degree of surface warming would try to evaporate 7% more water…and OMG!… 7% of 80 watts is 5.6 watts….one degree of warming is 5.4 watts by Stephan-Boltzmann…so actually as much cooling as warming, probably gonna end up close to the same temp…….
So, in summation, what you are saying is the climate is just fine, and everybody should calm down. That’s a message I can get behind!
Yes the effect of doubling CO2 is greatly overstated by media and grant seekers.
Yes, they can 😀
Just one thing – the lunatic cult followers believe that adding CO2 to air makes thermometers hotter! How insane is that?
Dr. Soon described the physics. Now, it is the obligation of the student to understand. Dr. Soon cannot overcome willful ignorance. Fifty years ago, the project began to channel a thousand $trillion into the bank accounts of the oligarchs and to bankrupt the world by 2050. Since 2020, the project has grown exponentially into the largest wealth transfer in the history of humanity, exceeding even the wealth transfer to China which began a decade earlier.
CO2 was a most convenient vehicle since few people have any concept of scale.
Dr. Soon understands about “Wag the Dog”.
He actually does very little to adress the physics. He is much more into comparing climate reconstructions to CO2 concentrations and solar activity…
Have you ever heard the adage that it is impossible to prove a negative is true?
If you agree with the consensus, then it is up to you to show the measurable experimental evidence that proves CO2 is the controlknob for temperature.
A time series is used for forecasting. It cannot show a functional relationship between CO2 and temperature.
You got it wrong. I do not agree with consensus science, I have falsified it. What I criticize is that Soon (and many others), despite partisanship, fail to deliver. He, and everybody here it seems, puts partisanship first, and competence last.
How do you think Soon came up with the FACT that the temperature correlates more with the sun than with CO2? Out of his butt?
That was consensus for a long time, like with the maunder minimum. It is just that it would not explain current warming.
You mean thermometers becoming hotter? That requires additional heat, and CO2 provides no additional heat, does it?
Carry on avoiding reality. It’s good for a laugh, although it might be considered bad form to laugh at the antics of the mentally afflicted. You can’t help your affliction.
The belief that CO2 has anything to do with warming has been well and thoroughly debunked by the application of real world data.
Over the history of the planet, there is no correlation between CO2 and temperature, at any time scale.
Some say so, some say so..
There probably wasn’t enough time in the interview to go through that much detail. And, the interviewer, knowing the audience didn’t asked the question.
Maybe Soon doesn’t see the need in explaining what is wrong with the consensus position because he puts little value in the idea of consensus in science.
If you were to spend a year or two going through his decades worth of research you might find an answer to your question.
That would be pretty important..
My morning pedantry –
Science.
“citing the fact that taxes and regulations can be imposed on CO2,”
I have lost the link. In 1975, a UN official from the Environmental group commented with regards to CO2 causing the “impending mini ice age” that he did not know if CO2 was the cause but CO2 could be quantified and taxed.
That seems to be the first domino leading to the CO2 hysteria.
The 1st domino imo was the planned aerosol tax.
They’ve been banging the Aerosol gonna kill us all drums very hard in the 70ies.
So hard that even CiA and the Pentagon were telling people that the Ice Age would cause massive starvation and migration.
And the solution to save us all would have been an aerosol tax.
Problem was that catalysts turned out to be too effective and the strategical mistake that an Ice Age would require a massive increase in power plants to compensate for a cooler climate.
And you can’t deindustrialize by building new power plants.
Therefore our eugenist, depopulation and ice age prophets Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren
turned into warming zealots.
Holdren so much that he became Obamas climate tzar(2 Messiahs working hand in hand to save the planet)
“temperature patterns over the last 150 years correlate much better with solar activity fluctuations than with CO2 levels.”
Do we have any data to show this?
Correlation does not necessarily imply causation.
Not only the Sun but Earth’s relationship with it.
You never see the northern excursion of the Sun mentioned in climate science. Or the erratic orbit of the Sun and how that changes proximity to Earth.
And very few people actually understand how orbital precession changes the solar intensity.
It is the Sun/Ocean dynamo that dominates the weather process we see everyday.
Hmmmm . . . the Earth orbits the Sun, not the other way around. And that orbit is extremely predictable over thousands of years.
However it is also true that the Sun orbits the barycenter of the solar system . . . not that that causes any real physical effect.
The top chart on the page shows the erratic orbit of the Sun. It alters the distance to Earth from year to year. And distance affects the solar intensity on Earth.
All of the current observed climate trends can be blamed on the Sun and Earth’s re;lationship with it. For example, there were three reinforcing solar influences that caused the 2024 spike in temperature. The solar activity reached a pear; the northern excursion of the Sun peaked and the distance to Earth during the July August period was as low as it gets for the current orbital precession.
Very similar reinforcing peaks for 1998 temperature peak. The 2015 peak was driven by solar intensity and orbit in plane that reinforced the El Nino event.
Every observed temperature spike and trend can be sheeted back to the Sun such as the LIA, the MWP and RWP.
While money has poured into the CO2 demonising, the Sun has been thoroughly neglected ..
Eh? It’s the Earth’s elliptical orbit that causes its distance from the Sun to vary; not “the erratic orbit of the Sun”. The Sun does not orbit the Earth!
Correct. But the Sun orbits the SBC erratically and takes roughly 11 years to do a cycle. So it alters the amount of sunlight reaching Earth over short and long cycles depending on its distance to Earth which is separate to Earth’s orbit of the SBC. It adds or subtracts to the Earth distance from the barycentre to give the actual distance between Earth and the Sun.
That variation in the distance of the Sun to the SBC has an influence on annual variation in peak solar forcing than any of the contrived nonsense about CO2 radiative forcing.
Anyone who takes time to study there Sun soon realises it is responsible for all the observed temperature spikes.
Astrophysics is hard. The solar system is not a semi-planar flat planet orbits. An elliptical orbit implies a planar orientation. The whole system is plunging through space not as a Frisbee, but a 3-dimensional system.
See this link.
how solar system really moves #shorts
Look at the complicated dance the planets make. We know that different planet’s gravity has an effect on earth. They also have an effect on the sun itself and the various radiation fields in the solar system. It is not unreasonable to assume this dance can have an effect on the sun to earth relationship which can result in a variation of the radiation that the earth receives. Dr. Soon certainly has more knowledge than myself about this and I respect his opinion that climate science hasn’t even begun to include all the interactions that affect the earth.
The Earth has a current orbital apogee of about 152,087,376 km from the Sun compared to its current orbital perigee of about 147,099,894 km, and it effectively experiences this same distance variation (to three significant figures) year-after-year over thousands of years because it is in an extremely stable elliptical orbit.
Earth’s orbital eccentricity (with respect to the Sun) does vary from a minimum of 0.0034 to a maximum of 0.058 as a result of gravitational attractions among the planets, but this takes hundreds of thousands of years.
The current apogee:perigee distance variation of 3.39% translates to an annual TOA solar insolation variation of 6.90%. This amount of variation in solar energy overwhelms much smaller variations of solar insolation due to Hale, Gleissberg, and Bray cycles of sunspots/solar luminosity and other longer, multi-millennia changes in the Sun’s radiation output.
However, it is also true that the Earth’s average orbital distance from the Sun is increasing . . . at the whopping speed of about 1.5 centimeters (0.6 inches) per year!
(source: https://www.iflscience.com/if-the-suns-gravity-is-so-strong-how-come-all-the-planets-are-moving-away-from-it-76783 ).
Clearly you have no understanding of the data you are looking at. The stability of Earth’s orbit has nothing to do with the distance to the Sun from year to year because the Sun has an erratic orbit and it takes around 11 years to orbit the SBC.
On 12 Dec 2025, the distance between centre of Earth and centre of the Sun is 147291733km. Last year on 12 Dec distance was 147484722km. So this year it is 192989.9km closer than last year. Zenith solar intensity this year on 12 Dec is 1405.6W/m^2 compared with 1401.8W/m*2 last year. So approximately 3W/m^2 more sunlight this year than last and part of the the reason for many new snowfall records being set this year. The other part is that the peak boreal summer solar intensity has been higher than trend over the last few years.
The distance data comes directly from NASA JPL. Anyone who is not pushing a CO2 barrow can look for themselves.
The “orbit” of the Sun around the barycenter of the Solar System is not a closed geometry (circle or ellipse) and can take anywhere for 10-13 years to effectively complete just one “loop”.
See the great graphic display of this at https://www.skymarvels.com/gallery/Vid%20-%20Solar%20System%20Barycenter.htm
As for how this would affect the Sun-Earth distance, the maximum distance of the center of the Sun from the barycenter (when the four giant planets of the Solar System are on a straight line on the same side of the Sun) would at about 1.17 solar radii, or just over 810,000 km, above the Sun’s surface, equivalent to a total radial distance from the Sun’s center of mass of 2.17 solar radii, or 1.51e^6 km.
— source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycenter_(astronomy)
To put that in perspective, as I previously posted, Earth has a current orbital apogee of about 152,087,376 km from the Sun compared to its current orbital perigee of about 147,099,894 km. Therefore, the maximum current influence on solar insolation, accounting for the Sun actually orbiting the barycenter, would be (1.51e^6/152e^6)^2 = 0.00010 at apogee and (1.51e^6/147e^6)^2 = .00011 at perigee.
As I previously posted,
“The Earth . . . effectively experiences this same distance variation (to three significant figures) year-after-year over thousands of years because it is in an extremely stable elliptical orbit.”
With the above calculations and particularly in regards to your comment about a change of “192989.9km closer” in Earth-Sun distance from 12 December 2024 to 12 December, you clearly do not understand the phrase “to three significant figures”.
Finally, the value you gave for the change in zenith solar intensity on December 12, 2025 vs 2024, is clearly erroneous: the change of (192989.9/147484722)^2 = 1.71e^-6, and multiplying 1405.6W/m^2 by that small number gives a net change 0.0024 W/m^2, nowhere near the change of “approximately 3W/m^2 more sunlight this year than last” that you asserted.
Trust the math over the JPL website, if indeed they provided the exact numbers you quoted.
“As I previously posted,
“The Earth . . . effectively experiences this same distance variation (to three significant figures) year-after-year over thousands of years because it is in an extremely stable elliptical orbit.””
Huh….. Ice ages happen over thousands of years. Coincidence?
The fall into an ice age and the climb out don’t happen over a decade. Nor is there a driver of AGW in past to drive CO2 to levels to cause an ice age and lift the earth out of an ice age. Certainly sounds like it is a change in heat input from the sun rather than CO2!
Give me a break! Here is the history of Earth’s major Ice Ages:
— earliest well-established Ice Age, called the “Huronian”, dated to around 2.4 to 2.1 billion years ago,
— next well-documented Ice Age, and probably the most severe of the last billion years, occurred from 720 to 630 million years ago (the “Cryogenian” period) and may have produced a Snowball Earth in which glacial ice sheets reached the equator,
— the “Andean-Saharan” occurred from 460 to 420 million years ago,
— the “Karoo”, occurred from 360 to 260 million years ago,
—the current “Quaternary” which started about 2.6 million years ago.
NONE of the Ice Ages happened “over thousands of years”, more correctly they happened over tens of millions of years.
If instead of Ice Ages you meant to refer to glacial/interglacial cycles that occur with Ice Ages, specifically the last ten or so that have happened within the current Quaternary Ice Age that Earth is currently in, those have happened on cycles having periods of about 100,000 years each, not some “thousands of years”.
And who said anything about atmospheric CO2 levels causing either Ice Ages or glacial/interglacial cycles?
ROTFL!
Now you are displaying your limited maths ability. The ratio of the distances is 1.00131. Squaring that gives 1.00262. Taking the inverse gives 0.9974. That gives 1401.9. The 1401.7 figure above includes the reduction in solar constant due to being past the peak of the current solar cycle.
Yes, you are correct in that I made a mistake in my math immediately above for ratioing of radiation flux based on distance variation.
However see, a subsequent post for my correct calculation based on correct distances from the Sun for 2025 versus 2024.
You should stop drinking the hard stuff now because you are clearly losing your track.
I have already pointed out that I used JPL data for Earth-Sun distance to centres. It is not your Mickey Mouse Earth orbit distance to the barycentre. The Sun is not stuck at the barycentre.
Why am I not surprised that you don’t provide a URL link the the “JPL data” so that I and other WUWT readers can independently check the numbers that you provided?
Based on the independent, on-line Earth-Sun distance indicator that I referenced (by URL), I’m betting that you incorrectly copied the value of 12-22-2025 distance stated to be 147,484,722km, and not to be around 147,300,000 km.
The Earth is now very close to perigee, which occurs on Jan. 3, 2026, with the stated Earth-Sun distance of 147,099,894 km. So, the Earth is NOT going to lose your stated “147291733 km for Dec 12, 2025” – 147,099,894 km = 191,839 km delta-distance in a tad over 2 weeks.
I made an math mistake in my above post in calculating the impacts of the Sun being closer to Earth when its at its maximum possible distance from orbiting the Solar System’s barycenter.
The correct calculations are:
at apogee: (152e^6/(152e^6-1.5e^6)^2 = 1.020 = +2.0%
at perigee: (147e^6/(147e^6-1.5e^6)^2 = 1.021 = +2.1%
So, yes, there is small increase in solar insolation in those rare cases when the four giant planets of the Solar System are on a straight line on the same side of the Sun (the Grand Sygyzy).
For reference as to the rarity of planetary alignments that would result in the maximum distance of the Sun from the Solar System barycenter, an alignment of just Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus happens about about once every 150 years or so, and this leaves out the gas giant Neptune.
— https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comments/t0zqyd/how_often_do_planets_align_like_this_taken/
The next time all eight Solar System planets will be “closest to being aligned” on one side of the Sun is year 2492.
— https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/08/28/when-do-the-planets-in-our-solar-system-all-line-up/
Using the on-line Sun-to-Earth distance calculator available at https://clearskytonight.com/projects/astronomycalculator/sun/sundistance.html, I obtain the following values:
December 12, 2024, 12:00:00 GMT: 147,283,035 km
December 12, 2025, 12:00:00 GMT: 147,287,370 km
Those values say that the Earth was 4,335 km further away from the Sun at the end of that one year interval, not 192,989.9km closer.
Those values are much more believable than the values you cite coming from NASA JPL.
And those values, applied to your stated solar insolation of 1401.8 W/m*2 for 12-12-2024, would equate to a predicted value of ((147,283,035/147,287,370)^2)*1401.8 = 0.999941*1401.8 = 1401.7 W/m^2 for 12-12-25 . . . that is, a much more believable decrease of 0.1 W^2 over the course of 1 calendar year.
Also, in terms of incoming sunlight averaged of the Earth’s surface for a 24 hour period, one has to divide incoming solar insolation by 4 to get the average flux onto Earth’s full near-spherical surface.
So, in reality we’re talking about an effective change of about -0.1/1361 = -0.007% in solar radiation flux at Earth’s TOA in Dec 2025 compared to Dec 2024. (Note that the standard value of solar insolation at 1 AU from the Sun is 1361 W/m^2, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_constant ).
So now you are trying to discredit JPL. If you do that successfully, then you automatically discredit every climate model because they are based on JPL orbital data.
You are using Mickey Mouse junk site that supports your ill informed belief. It its based on distance to the SBC not the centre of the Sun. And, like I stated above, the centre of the Sun is not the same as the SBC.
And no acknowledgement of your basic maths error. You are a sad case. Trying any sort of nonsense to keep your deluded belief alive.
Please cite just one credible source that confirms that outrageous claim. Do you really think that JPL is the single source of data used by all those that attempt to model Earth’s climate?
ROTFL!
Hah . . . that statement is not at all certain.
Independent of incoming solar insolation at TOA, the temperatures of Earth’s land mass surfaces, ocean surfaces, and lower atmosphere are highly dependent on such things as continental drift and related ocean circulation patterns, variations in areal cloud coverage as affect Earth’s albedo over time scales of years to millennia, and similar variations in snow/ice/vegetative areal coverage as effect Earth’s average emissivity to the atmosphere and to deep space.
Scientific “situational awareness” demands a broader look for factors affecting Earth’s weather and climate than just a focus on solar insolation and its variations.
All the factors you list are driven by the solar intensity within the bounds set by change of phase of water. It is impossible for open ocean surface to sustain more than 30C and it is impossible for ocean water to be cooler than -1.2C.
It is no accident that the average surface temperature of Earth lies close to the centre of these two limits. But, within those limits, the variation in temperature is highly correlated to solar intensity. All that detail is covered here with examples of how well the temperature correlates in different climate zones::
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/05/04/high-resolution-earth-orbital-precession-relative-to-climate-weather/
The fact that Greenland is gaining altitude and its largest glacier is advancing is further proof that the ice is beginning to accumulate again in line with the rising peak solar intensity in the northern hemisphere as it has done many times before.
Really? . . . I’ll await your Nobel-prize winning scientific article describing how variations in solar intensity drive continental drift.
Just as the assumption that the Sun will rise tomorrow is called a “prediction” by the ignorant and gullible.
Just “Wow!” . . . that assumption/prediction that “the Sun will rise tomorrow” has served homo sapiens, ignorant as well as educated and “smart”, quite well over the last 300,000 or so years.
I confidently predict that the Sun will rise tomorrow.
Do you really think that anybody at all values your word salad? Sounds like you have abandoned the pretense of being rational, and returned to childhood!
You assume that the Sun will rise tomorrow, just like a small child (or some plants). Is that the level of your predictive ability? The “predictions” of “climate scientists” rapidly turned into “projections” and “scenarios”, and the IPCC clearly stated that it is not possible to predict future climate states.
You believe that adding CO2 to air makes thermometers hotter, don’t you? Try to convince me that you are not ignorant and gullible.
Of course it is the sun. I had a professor that said that back in 1972. That was before the global warming hysteria. It was at the very start of a lecture before about two hundred undergrads when he said that because we know so little about the sun, we assume that the sun is a constant. I still have it as the first thing in my class notes, which I never threw away. So, we go back to where we were in 1972.
It is a sad reflection on the UN that they have pushed this scam so venomously that it has wasted a huge amount of human endeavour on useless activity.
Yes, the UN is the most glaring example of what happens when “mission creep” is allowed to fester unconstrained.
From an organization that was chartered and resourced in good faith to attempt containment of military conflicts around the world, in its 77 years of existence it has morphed (metastasized?) into an organization that has accorded itself the job of world governance, elected only by themselves.
The reason the UN exists is to implement a global tax.
Otherwise there’ll be no global government.
From the moment the UN was created a global tax was the endgame.
As Gordon Brown showed at Copenhagen and the current attempts to tax ocean going ships for their emissions. The tax is intended to fund the expanded UN.
Harold The Organic Chemist Says:
RE: The Greenhouse Effect
RE: CO2 vs H2O
At the Mauna Loa Obs. in Hawaii, the concentration of CO2 in dry air is currently 426 ppmv. One cubic meter of this air has mass of 1,290 g and contains a mere 0.84 g of CO2 at STP.
In air at 21° C and 70% RH, the concentration of H2O is 17,780 ppmv. One cubic meter of this air has mass of 1,200 g and contains 14.3 g of H2O and 0.78 g of CO2. To the first approximation and all things being equal, the proportion of the greenhouse effect (GHE) due to H2O is given by:
GHE=moles H2O/(moles H2O+moles CO2)=0.79/(0.79+0.018)=0.98
This calculation assumes that a molecule of H2O and a molecule CO2 each absorb about the same amount of out-going long wavelength IR light emanating from the earth’s surface. Actually, H2O absorbs more IR light than CO2. Keep in mind that 71% of the earth’s surface is covered with water and there is little CO2 in the air.
The above empirical data and calculations falsifies the claims by the IPCC and the unscrupulous collaborating scientists that CO2 causes “global warming” and is the “control knob of climate change”. The purpose of these claims is to justify the preservation and generous funding of the IPCC and the distribution by the UN of doner funds, via the UNFCCC and the UN COP, from the rich countries to poor countries to help them cope with the alleged harmful effects of global warming and climate change.
At the COP30 conference in Brazil the poor countries came clamoring not for billions but trillions of funds. Unfortunately for them they walked away empty handed with little pledges of funds from the rich countries. After Administrator Lee Zeldin of the EPA rescinds the Endangerment Finding of 2009 for CO2, he will put an end to the greatest scientific fraud since the Piltdown Man.
But somehow they can use that extra fraction of a fraction a gram of CO2 to show it causes warming? I don’t think so..
Since the interview was in Germany and published in German, will Germany learn that CO2 does not cause global warming and then abandon the Net Zero Goal by 2050? Will Germany start building new coal-fired and nuclear power plants? Will the EU pay attention to this interview and abandon their draconian climate agenda?
According to news reports on Tuesday the EU announce that the ban on ICE vehicles in 2035 will be postponed indefinitely. German car manufacturers have been lobbying for a relaxation
The bad actors in gouvernement wont change anything concerning “climate protection”
Beyond Dr. Soon’s focus on the last 150 years (as specified in the above article), I am sure that he is well of the fact that paleoclimatology reconstructions of Earth’s climate—particularly global average lower atmospheric temperatures versus global average atmospheric CO2 concentrations— show little to zero correlation between those two parameters for a history going back 500 million years.
Such reconstructions also indicate Earth survived atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 5,000 ppmv or higher (compared to today’s concentration of about 420 ppmv) without crossing any “tipping point” or causing any event “catastrophic” to its flora or fauna.
Those nice levels of CO2 were absolutely beneficial..
Vegetation LUV’d it. !!
The dinosaurs THRIVED in high CO2 generating the food they needed to survive. The “meteor hitting the earth” didn’t kill the dinosaurs directly. It deprived them of the food they needed to survive. CO2 is a survival tool!
My error: first sentence should read “. . . he is well aware of the fact . . .”
It’s the Sun…and that view is considered “controversial”.
Yep that’s the problem, right there…what a bunch of maroons!
„To je Sunce, glupane.“
“It’s the Sun, stupid.”
(Translated from Serbian.)
Serbian Milutin Milanković (1879–1958) worked on his astronomical theory for 30 years. In his calculations (during the First World War), he started from the assumption that the climate depends on the amount of solar radiation received by different parts of the Earth’s globe, and that this amount of radiation depends on the distance to the Sun and the Earth’s position in space (including the axial tilt). Using the mathematical calculations of orbital parameters by Ludwig Pilgrim given for the past million years, Milanković determined 3 basic elements that periodically change throughout history.
Humans worshipped the Sun for a reason.
That reason is blazingly obvious.
Obviously. Without the Sun, the surface temperature would be around 35 K. No gas, no atmosphere. This knowledge does not help to predict tomorrow’s weather, unfortunately.
If it looks like rain, take your umbrella.
His decades of
research into solar and stellar physicsfunding from fossil fuel interests lead him to the controversial conclusion that focusing on regulating CO2 is misguided…Playing the man instead of the ball speaks volumes about your state of mind. You petty little worm.
No ‘playing the man’, now! Lol!
Not this pathetic bullshit again.
Why don’t you criticize the income sources of agw shills like David Suzuki et al who charge $30k CAD to present a lecture at a primary school?
You people are abject hypocrites.
It is also a massive LIE.. as has been explained to Fungal multiple times.
Still waiting for him/her to produce some measured scientific evidence of warming by human released CO2..
He/she is batting negative ∞ so far.
There is absolutely ZERO NEED to regulate human released CO2…
… in fact it is a scientific and economic idiocy.
TFN is an Ehrlich disciple. They all believe that killing off the human race would be *good* for the planet. So deprive the Earth of CO2, kill off all the green stuff, and watch the human race dwindle just like the dinosaurs did.
Is Erlich an American like the US Army Major who declared “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it”?
First off, it is a proven lie that Soon is funded by fossil fuel interests.
When you have to attack the man instead of his research, you have already admitted that his data is irrefutable.
And insanity deludes you into thinking that adding CO2 to air makes thermometers hotter!
Unless you can provide some other reason for your denial of reality.
A fine example of what I call the “appeal to lack of authority” logical fallacy.
.
Willie Soon : 2 + 2 = 4
TFN : Mathematicians ! The fossil-fuel funded Willie Soon says “2 + 2 = 4” ! !
This means that it is 100% guaranteed certain that “two plus two” definitely does not equal “four” ! ! !
You have to rewrite the laws of integer arithmetic so that “2 + 2” no longer equals “4” ! ! ! ! !
.
Willie Soon : E = mc²
TFN : Physicists ! The fossil-fuel funded Willie Soon says “E = mc²” ! !
This means that it is 100% guaranteed certain that “energy” definitely does not equal “mass times the speed of light squared” ! ! !
You have to rewrite the laws of (special) relativity so that “E” no longer equals “mc²” ! ! ! ! !
.
As a Canadian judge put it a decade (or two ?) ago :
“Play the Ball, not the Mann”.
The comments here illustrate the divide. It is the same on LinkedIn, etc.
If there is a paycheck in it, some people will contend that the sun does not rise.
Please can we use the same temperature scale? It’s usually inappropriate to use the Kelvin scale particularly when talking about everyday temperatures, for example 225K for Antarctica, 280K for today’s temperature in the U.K., 313K for midsummer in Europe are meaningless. { Imagine if the media started to use the thermodynamic temperature scale, with 0K being blue, Antarctica could be yellow on their charts, with the U.K. today being orange/red and midsummer Europe would be in the infra red (or black)! }
Some of Dr. Willie Soon’s statements about the greenhouse effect and the role
of CO2 in the warming of the Earth are more a perfect storm of pretentious
pronunciamentos than a body of scientifically crafted and accurate
counter-arguments (to the global-warming narrative). For example, he is quoted:
“The sun provides 99.99% of the energy that powers our weather and climate, and
satellite data confirms that solar radiation is not a constant, but fluctuates,
particularly in the UV and X-ray ranges. … temperature patterns over the last
150 years correlate much better with solar activity fluctuations than with CO2
levels. … the CO2 signal is below the detection limit as a primary climate
driver.” The sun provides virtually all the energy that energizes our weather.
And its total incoming energy never fluctuates much, as shown by meticulous
satellite measurements (and has actually been getting lower while the global
temperature has been rising … a little). It is this energy, allegedly, that
gets further trapped on the earth due to CO2 in its atmosphere, which allegedly
is caused by specifically “greenhouse” trapping, which is what FURTHER magically
warms the Earth; not because its source is not the sun but because it processes
the sun’s heat in a different way as to magnify its heating effects … again,
allegedly. So any talk of where the heat came from (and lying about its
non-existent amplitude fluctuations) is not addressing the arguments of the
global-warming people. Also, all varying UV and X-ray light from the sun (which
represents a very small fraction of the totality of solar irradiance falling on
Earth) is absorbed or scattered by Earth’s atmosphere at high altitudes, and that
doesn’t mean necessarily warming even at those altitudes, and certainly doesn’t
mean such warming (or cooling) the atmosphere at lower altitudes, nor at the
Earth’s surface, where we (and our weather) are. His assertions to the contrary
are absurd. It is true that some of his statements can be interpreted as
pointing out a real correlation between an increased solar wind (coincident with
increased sunspot activity) and the warming of the Earth (though he fails to
point out the time delay here and that solar “activity” and solar luminosity are
two entirely different things). But the mechanism for this is not the solar wind
hitting the Earth and thereby somehow warming it, but rather the solar wind
stopping cosmic rays at billions of miles from Earth from reaching the Earth and
thereby making the atmosphere of the Earth clearer, so that the sun can shine
through to a greater extent and thereby further warm the Earth’s surface. Yet,
in his expositions, he is implying something very different: that the solar wind
has a “direct link” to warming the Earth. There is no conceivable mechanism
supporting such a belief. This is not nit-picking — this is science. And
atmospheric CO2 levels have been going in just one direction in the last 150
years, and it ain’t down. It has been up — and temperatures have pretty much
followed. Of course it is a classic case of post hoc ergo propter hoc to use
this coincidence as a proof of causation, but why spotlight the stupidity of the
wackadoodles by even mentioning their brain-dead “logic” in this respect? And he
alludes to the beneficial effect of CO2 on photosynthesis, as if this somehow has
relevance to its purported global surface warming effect, when this biological
effect has absolutely nothing to do with the greenhouse effect, and so does not
counter it through its beneficial nature. The greenhouse effect is supposed to
act through near-surface, atmospheric infrared radiation absorption, not
biological mechanisms creating large, heat-retaining, surface plant structures
(which may increase temperatures — on land and in the sea … a little). So any
warming caused by CO2 by this mechanism is, at best, irrelevant to the argument.
And to top it all off, by referring to a “CO2 signal” being below the “detection
limit” of a primary climate driver, he gives implicit sanction to the very
modeling of our modern, major, climate “scientist” generals, demonizing CO2 in
our atmosphere. In fact, such petitio principii models merely assume what they
are trying to prove: that CO2 radiatively warms the surface of the earth, when it
is the conduction and convection of ALL gases (especially nitrogen) in our
atmosphere causing this atmospheric warming effect. Yes, some of his practical
ideas are quite prescient, like adapting improved flood control (a warmer world
automatically means more atmospheric water vapor which means more rain, or at
least more precipitation, likely leading to more flooding), but this can’t excuse
his many scientific over-simplifications.
David Solan