Schwabe Solar Cycles

A Canadian climatologist worries about, um, global cooling (via):

Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thousand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists.

Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet. [...]

In some fields the science is indeed "settled." For example, plate tectonics, once highly controversial, is now so well-established that we rarely see papers on the subject at all. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.

Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.

Meantime, we need to continue research into this, the most complex field of science ever tackled, and immediately halt wasted expenditures on the King Canute-like task of "stopping climate change."

Comments

[IanCroydon]

It is clear that the jury is still out on this one, although many feel the court has closed session.

CO2 forms a minute amount of the atmospheric content, even when only considering the "greenhouse gas", and even less considering that the effect of CO2 is a lot less than water vapour or methane. An even smaller amount of this is generated by humans, and an even smaller amount makes the difference.

It has yet to be demonstrated scientifically that this small CO2 contribution will have such global effects, there is nothing like plate tectonic theory supporting it, just speculation.

The standard theory is not the CO2 is the driver as it is too small, but that CO2 contributes to a cascading effect, initiating a tripping mechanism that then causes global catastrophe, but this means any kind of increase, human generated or otherwise, of any of the greenhouse gases will achieve the same effect.

The only reason climate change is being forwarded is because of the artificial economy of "carbon credits" is now underway, ever since Russia signed up to it, a flawed system which does not actually contribute to a reduction in CO2, the current non-Kyoto policies of George W Bush are much more effective.

Watch as competing theories of what contributes to climate change are crushed, as more interested parties join the carbon credit bandwagon there will be real economic interests, which are far more powerful than anything gaia can throw at your conscience, having a theory prove that something far more relevant than carbon is the reason behind climate change will instantly devalue carbon, it would be like gold becoming worthless overnight.

[dearieme]

The solar-cycle explanation has the advantage of being all Physics, whereas the CO2 explanation is Physics and Chemistry. There are more potentially unemployed academic physicists than chemists (fundamental physics has got stuck; chemistry continues on its pragmatic course) and so the physicists in the "Scientific Community" might start to favour solar-cycle research, crying that great science slogan "Gi'me a Grant".

[DaninVan]

Thanks for that link, M.H., good stuff! http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/comment/story.html?id=597d0677-2a05-47b4-b34f-b84068db11f4&p=4

[Alessandro Lukan]

Because of obvious physical reasons and paleodata,I agree completely with your opinion about clima changes and CO2, but I do not agree with your conclusions concerning solar wind and galactic cosmic rays because I doubt about your physical explanations and tha correlation with Earth magnetic field proves the contrary. Observing the growing desertification during the warming up, contrary to all paleodata, I find, the man made deforestation and other polutions (not CO2) provoke a catastrophe. I would like to continue the discussion, particularly about Schwabe Solar Cycles.