Earth’s climate has changed many times over four billion years, and 99.999% of those changes occurred before humans were on this planet. During that short time, humans adjusted their housing, clothing, and agriculture in response to climate changes. Can we now control the climate?
Except for decades-long droughts or massive volcanic explosions that ended some civilizations, humanity generally adjusted successfully – through a Pleistocene Ice Age, a Little Ice Age, a Dust Bowl, and other natural crises. Numerous state high temperature records were set in Dust Bowl years.
After putting our current “microsecond” on Earth into its proper perspective, we might therefore ask:
* With today’s vastly superior technologies, why would humanity possibly be unable to adjust to even a few-degrees temperature increase, especially with more atmospheric carbon dioxide helping plants grow faster and better providing more food for animals and people?
* How dare the political, bureaucratic, academic, and media ruling elites – who propagate GIGO computer predictions, calculated myths, and outright disinformation – tell us we must implement their “green” policies immediately and universally … or humanity won’t survive manmade climate influences that are minuscule compared to the planetary, solar and galactic forces that really control Earth’s climate?
* How dare those elites tell Earth’s poorest people and nations they have no right to seek energy, health, and living standards akin to what developed countries already enjoy?
Scientists, geophysicists, and engineers have yet to explain or prove what caused the slight change in global temperatures we are experiencing today – much less the huge fluctuations that brought five successive mile-high continental glaciers and sea levels that plunged 400 feet each time (because seawater was turned to ice), interspersed with warm interglacial periods like the one we’re in now.
Moreover, none of the dire predictions of cataclysmic temperature increases, sea level rise, and more frequent and intense storms have actually occurred, despite decades of climate chaos fearmongering.
Earth continues to experience climate changes from natural forces and/or human activity. However, adjusting to small temperature, sea level, and precipitation changes would inflict far less harm on our planet’s eight billion people than would ridding the world of fossil fuels that provide 80% of our energy and myriad products that helped to nearly double human life expectancy over the past 200 years.
Today, with fuels, products, housing, and infrastructures that didn’t even exist one or two centuries ago, we can adjust to almost anything.
When it’s cold, we heat-insulated homes and wear appropriate winter clothing; when it’s hot, we use air conditioning and wear lighter clothing. When it rains, we remain dry inside or with umbrellas; when it snows, we stay warm indoors or ski, bobsled, and build snowmen.
Climate changes may impact us in many ways. But eliminating coal, oil, and natural gas – with no 24/7/365 substitutes to replace them – would be immoral and evil. It would bring extreme shortages of reliable, affordable, essential energy and of over 6,000 essential products derived from fossil fuels.
It would inflict billions of needless deaths from diseases, malnutrition, extreme heat, and cold, and wild weather – on a planet where the human population has grown from 1 billion to 8 billion since Col. Edwin Drake drilled the first oil well in 1859.
* Weather-related fatalities have virtually disappeared, thanks to accurate forecasting, storm warnings, modern buildings, and medicines and other petroleum-based products that weren’t available even 100 years ago.
* Fossil fuels for huge long-range jets and merchant ships move people, products, food, and medications to support global trade, mobility, health, and lifestyle choices. Indeed, more than 50,000 merchant ships, 20,000 commercial aircraft, and 50,000 military aircraft use fuels manufactured from crude oil.
* Food to feed Americans and humanity would be far less abundant and affordable without the fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, and tractor and transportation fuels that come from oil and natural gas.
* Everything powered by electricity utilizes petroleum-based derivatives: wind turbine blades and nacelle covers, wire insulation, iPhone and computer housings, defibrillators, myriad EV components, and more.
Petroleum industry history demonstrates that crude oil was virtually useless until it could be transformed in refineries and chemical plants into derivatives that are the foundation for plastics, solvents, medications, and other products that support industries, health, and living standards. The same is true for everything else that comes out of holes in the ground.
Plants and rocks, metals and minerals have no inherent value unless we learn how to cook them, extract metals from them, bend and shape them, or otherwise convert them into something we can use.
Similarly, the futures of poor developing countries hinge on their ability to harness foundational elements: fuels, electricity, minerals, and feedstocks made from fossil fuels and other materials that are the basis for all buildings, infrastructures, and other technologies in industrialized countries.
For the 80% of humanity in Africa, Asia, and Latin America who still live on less than $10 a day – and the billions who still have little to no access to electricity – life is severely complicated and compromised by the hypocritical “green” agendas of wealthy country elites who have benefited so tremendously from fossil fuels since the modern industrial era began around 1850. Before that:
* Life spans were around 40 years, and people seldom travelled more than 100 miles from their birthplaces.
* There was no electricity since generating, transmitting, and utilizing this amazing energy resource requires technologies made from oil and natural gas derivatives.
* That meant the world had no modern transportation, hospitals, medicines and medical equipment, kitchen and laundry appliances, radio and other electronics, cell phones and other telecommunications, air and space travel, central heating and air conditioning, or year-round shipping and preservation of meats, fruits, and vegetables, to name just a few things most of us just take for granted.
There are no silver-bullet solutions to save people from natural or manmade climate changes. However, adjusting to those fluctuations is the only solution that minimizes fatalities, which would be caused by the callous or unthinking elimination of the petroleum fuels and building blocks that truly make life possible and enjoyable instead of nasty, brutish, and short. The late Steven Lyazi explained it perfectly:
“Wind and solar are … short-term solutions …. to meet basic needs until [faraway Ugandan villages] can be connected to transmission lines and a grid. Only in that way can we have modern homes, heating, lighting, cooking, refrigeration, offices, factories, schools, shops, and hospitals – so that we can enjoy the same living standards people in industrialized countries do (and think is their right). We deserve the same rights and lives.
“What is an extra degree, or even two degrees, of warming in places like Africa? It’s already incredibly hot here, and people are used to it. What we Africans worry about and need to fix are malnutrition and starvation, the absence of electricity, and killer diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, sleeping sickness, and HIV/AIDS…. We just need to be set free to [get the job done].”
Disturbing resting seafloor CO2 is yet another way humans are believed to be heating up the planet.
Only 1% of the seafloor has been molested by dragging nets through the sand (trawling) in an effort to retrieve the seafood staples we enjoy. But that’s enough to wreak havoc on the Earth’s climate at the top of the atmosphere, 100 km above the ocean surface, where CO2-induced global boiling is activated.
According to a new study and its press release, trawling the ocean floor for shrimp and cod disturbs the “planet-warming carbon dioxide” that had until then been peacefully reposed in sentiment. Dragging nets along the ocean floor “unlocks more carbon from the seafloor than all the world’s airplanes emit each year,” some 370 million metric tons worth.
And, of course, this acidifies the ocean too. When in its undisturbed state, the massive quantities of seafloor CO2 hadn’t been causing ocean acidification. But then as soon as the nets were dragged along the seafloor by humans, the disturbed CO2’s acidification potential was unleashed.
In others news along this front, we are told (O’Bryan et al., 2021) that “wild pigs are having a bigger climate change impact than one million cars” because they are now, for the first time (ever?) trampling over dirt outside of their “native range.”
Had they stayed in their confined wild pig area, their “native range,” the CO2 they released from the soil as they trampled across it would not have had any climate impact. But the dirt these wild pigs are disturbing now has CO2 in its at-rest state in it, and thus “this soil disturbance results in median emissions of 4.9 million metric tonnes (MMT) CO2 per year (equivalent to 1.1 million passenger vehicles).”
Wild pigs are now classified as an “invasive species” delivering a previously unrecognized global carbon footprint “threat” by uprooting soil outside of their lane.
There is no climate crisis, even if politicians, climate institutes, and the media would have you believe there is. Climate change is a fact, but it is a change as in everything changes, both inside and outside our atmosphere. No surprise! We will show that we should not turn climate change into a drama. On the contrary, we should take advantage of it. An encouraging message by emeritus professors Guus Berkhout and Kees de Lange.
In Part I, we urge politicians, climate researchers and journalists to stop fearmongering and stop citing results of flawed climate models. Our leaders must tell citizens the honest story.
By climate, we do not mean the fickle daily weather, but the average weather over a few decades (more than thirty years is the common definition). The climate represents an extraordinarily complex physical system and responds to all kinds of external influences from inside and outside our atmosphere. This has been happening for 4.5 billion years. We call these external influences the causes of climate change. The great scientific challenge is to know and understand the principal causes of past and present climate change. This scientific knowledge forms the basis of effective climate policy.
Mitigation and adaptation
If climate change can be shown to be dangerous, and the principal causes can be controlled by humans, then climate policy will have to focus on eliminating those causes. This is known as mitigation policy. But if humans are powerless against the dominant causes, then climate policy will have to focus on adaptation, the adaptation policy.
The drama begins when, for ideological reasons and/or dubious scientific research, mitigation is chosen, when adaptation is the correct route.
A critical look at the mainstream climate research as it has been conducted in recent decades, as well as a look at the geological history of the earth over 4.5 billion years, indicates that we are now heading in the wrong direction with our climate policy. As a result, we will spend hundreds of billions on policies that deliver nothing and do a lot of damage. That is exactly what experience has shown for decades.
Serious science
It is good to first recall how serious scientists do work. Science starts with making reliable observations. Today, satellites can collect an unimaginable number of valuable measurements about the properties of the climate system, such as temperature, pressure, and humidity. These observations tell the story of climate change. Hence, analysing those measurements is the first big step. This analysis yields important empirical relationships, such as temperature as a function of space (x, y, z) and time (t). The analysis also reveals relationships between system properties, such as between temperature and humidity. These relationships are empirical because they are derived directly from measurements and involve no theoretical foundation.
Illustration 1: Over the centuries we have seen that people with new ideas, even if they were based on reliable observations, have been silenced. It is sad that this phenomenon is still flourishing in the 21st century.
Explaining Observations
Then the second scientific phase begins: provide a scientific explanation of why the observations are the way they are. This is done through the development of theories, in which computer models play an important role in modern times. If a computer model can reproduce all relevant observations – and therefore all empirical relationships – we are on the right track with the theory. If that is not the case, all that remains for the theory is the wastepaper basket.
This is a ruthless test. Precisely this tough approach has brought natural science to its current level in just a few hundred years, since the work of prominent scientists such as Galileo Galilei (see illustration 1). Selling a theory or model by selecting only observations that are convenient is scientifically a mortal sin. Changing measurements to ensure that those measurements match model results is scientific fraud. Universities should teach their students these basic principles of science.
Reliable observations
So, everything starts with making reliable observations. That’s no mean feat! Astronomy is a good example. What is happening in the Universe is so complex that only the very best telescopes can provide humans with reliable observations that will help us understand all the wonderful things that are happening in outer space. The successor to the Hubble telescope, the James Webb telescope, produces images that amaze us every day. These images enable man to reject old assumptions and bring existing models of the origin of the universe closer to the truth.
Temperature measurements
Back to Earth’s climate. Temperature measurements are of great importance in climate research. Simple, you would say, you stick weather stations with thermometers in the ground and archive the results in a spreadsheet every day. This has indeed been the case in the past, but the question is: ‘Are these results reliable and representative?’ If only that were true. Scientific professionalism is also needed when it comes to measuring.
First of all, the surface of the planet is 70% water, so you don’t place a weather station in the ground in the oceans. Also, in the past, measuring stations were scarce, and some parts of the earth were much better covered than others. Moreover, measuring stations that used to be in the middle of nowhere are now in the suburbs of large cities, or right next to a factory or an airport, due to increasing urbanization. Due to the so-called Urban Island Effect, these locations are far from ideal. It was only slightly more than forty years ago that satellite measurements made it possible to measure the temperature worldwide in a way that is much more consistent, reliable, and representative.
Climate models and satellite measurements
The climate models have been telling us for many decades that Earth is warming to alarmingly high temperatures and that the CO2 gas is the main culprit. UN chief António Guterres puts it this way: “We are on a highway to climate hell” if we don’t stop emitting the ‘evil’ CO2 gas. It is also popular to add to this statement that 97% of the scientists agree. However, is that story true?
Illustration 2: UN boss Antonio Guterres warns the global community, “We are on a highway to climate hell” if humans do not stop emitting the evil CO2-gas.
Nonsensical scenarios
Even worse, to reinforce that panicky message from UN chief Guterres, nonsensical scenarios are used that are impossible in practice. For example, the infamous RCP 8.5 scenario was put into the climate models (an extreme CO2 emission scenario) to scare people on a large scale. That scenario, which predicts a warming of more than 6°C by 2100, is still used today, while it is well known that these predictions are based on nonsensical assumptions.
CO2-contribution
And 100% of scientists also agree that more CO2 contributes to warming, but only a minority really thinks that human CO2 is the dominant cause of current warming. That, too, is borne out by hard facts. In the first place, in the history of the Earth’s climate (long before there were humans) we see that there were periods with high CO2-concentrations and low temperatures, as well as periods with low CO2-concentrations and high temperatures. So, there were other causes at play, which had a major impact on the Earth’s temperature.
Saturation effect
But even more interesting are the modern satellite measurements that show that with more CO2 emissions there is a saturation effect, as we so often see in nature. The more CO2, the less the effect on temperature. The linear behaviour in the climate models does not correspond to reality. This partly explains the panicky predictions made by these models. A word for the connoisseurs about this. Le Chatelier’s law states that nature always strives to counteract disturbances (‘negative feedback’). This law explains, for example, that in climate history, glacial and interglacial periods have always remained within certain temperature limits, regardless of the CO2-concentration in the atmosphere.
Illustration 3: Nobel Laureate Dr. John Clauser, signatory of the Clintel’s World Climate Declaration, puts it this way: “Truth has the property of being in accord with reality and good science means observing reality in nature and reporting it accurately with no thought to the consequences.”
Molecule of life
In that light, we would like to say a few extra words about CO2. Laboratory measurements indicate that more CO2 does have a warming effect, but those measurements also indicate that this warming is modest and nonlinear. So, there is therefore no, we repeat no scientific evidence whatsoever for all those AGW scare stories. Moreover, measurements also show that CO2 is the molecule of life for all nature on Earth. The more CO2, the greener Earth becomes and the higher agriculture productivity becomes. If we compare both CO2 properties, nonlinear warming, and agricultural productivity, then the extremely expensive and disruptive “net-zero” climate policy being pursued is scientifically, economically, and socially irresponsible.
Cause and effect
Finally, the question of cause and effect in complex systems is one of the most difficult problems in science. For instance, there are also scientific indications that the warming of oceans causes more CO2 to be released into the atmosphere (Henry’s Law). So not only humans, but also nature influences the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The complete story should be taught in all schools. Not just the well-known fear story, but the complete story should be told. Why are our children so one-sidedly informed about climate?
Cooperation
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tells us an overly simplistic and alarmist story about climate change. In that story, anthropogenic CO2 is pointed out as the main cause (‘Science is settled‘). The consequence of this rigid statement is that a rapid phasing out of the use of fossil fuels is required. However, technical and economic realities will not allow this.
Apart from the practical impossibility, there are the scientific arguments. We have shown above that there are many indications that there is much more going on than anthropogenic CO2 (‘The science is not settled at all‘). We still know far too little about Earth’s climate to claim that humans can control it.
An appeal is made to both climate science worlds, alarmists and realists, stop fighting each other, and jointly build up more scientific knowledge about how climate changes, and do it more quickly. Here, reliable measurements should guide us. It is the only way to get closer to the truth with climate models.
In part II we will argue that we should work together on the opportunities that climate change offers, both scientifically, technologically, and economically. Mind you, a completely different approach to climate policy also means a completely different approach to the energy transition. The benefits will be large for everyone.
In part 2 we discussed the IPCC hypothesis of climate change that assumes humans and our greenhouse gas emissions and land use choices are the climate change “control knob.”[1] This hypothesis underpins their attempts to model Earth’s climate. But the model output fails to match many critical observations and in some cases the model/observation mismatches are getting worse with time.[2] Since these mismatches have persisted through six major iterations of the models, it is reasonable to assume the flaw is in the assumptions, that is within the hypothesis itself, as opposed to being in the model construction. In other words, it is likely the IPCC conceptual model should be scrapped, and a new one using different assumptions constructed. In this post we examine their underlying assumption that the Sun has not varied significantly, at least from a climate perspective, over the past 150-170 years.
As well-explained by Bob Irvine,[3] there are only two things that contribute to the thermal energy content of a planet, the amount of incoming energy and the energy residence time within the system. These two things, along with the climate system heat capacity, determine the surface temperature. Arrhenius assumed and the IPCC still assumes the Sun delivers a nearly constant amount of energy to Earth over periods of a few hundred years, constant enough that it has no impact on our climate. In addition, they work with annual averages to avoid seasonal and orbital changes. In AR6, the base period is 1750 to 2019. The IPCC assumes the Sun is invariant, at least on an annual basis, over this period and volcanic activity is just slightly negative, as shown in figure 2.[4] AR6 summarizes their views as follows:
“Changes in solar and volcanic activity are assessed to have together contributed a small change of –0.02 [–0.06 to +0.02] °C since 1750 (medium confidence).”AR6 p. 962.
The change of “-0.02°C” is indistinguishable from zero. Since the IPCC assumes that solar input to Earth’s climate system does not change, temperature only varies as a function of the “energy residence time,” which they assume is controlled by human activity and greenhouse gas emissions.
As explained in part 2, greenhouse gases absorb radiation emitted by Earth’s surface and use it to warm the lower atmosphere, thus delaying its eventual escape to space. It is uncontroversial that adding more of these gases increases the delay, warming the planet’s surface.
The IPCC assumes that the radiative forcing for a doubling of CO2 from 1750 levels is 3.9[5] W/m2 or less and that the climate impact of this forcing change is roughly equivalent to a change in solar forcing of 3.9 W/m2.[6] But a 3.9 W/m2 change in greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere in the infrared frequencies cannot penetrate the top millimeter of the ocean. Thus, it has a different impact than a 3.9 W/m2 change in solar radiation, part of which penetrates more than 100 meters into the ocean before it is fully absorbed. Oceans cover 70% of Earth’s surface and have a low albedo (reflectivity) to sunlight, thus the oceans absorb most sunlight reaching Earth.
Figure 2. The IPCC AR6 model simulated temperature change components for the period 1750-2019. Source: AR6, p 961, figure 7.7.
Downwelling greenhouse gas radiation warms the surface of the ocean briefly, then most of it is quickly carried away by the overlying wind or as latent heat of evaporation. It has a short residence time in the ocean and in Earth’s climate system. A change in incoming solar radiation is absorbed deeper in the ocean and has a longer residence time. This increases the ocean warming effect at the point of incidence and spreads the new thermal energy over a larger volume of water. The difference in the surface warming effect can be a factor of three or more, Watt-per-Watt, relative to a change in greenhouse gas back-radiation.[7]
Evidence that Bob Irvine’s hypothesis is correct includes the change in ocean temperatures over the course of one approximately 11-year solar cycle.[8] The shallow ocean heat storage above the 22°C isotherm,[9] increases almost an order of magnitude more than the direct effect[10] of the solar cycle radiation increase. Further, this change is in phase with the solar cycle. Small changes in the Sun’s output can accumulate over time, increasing their effect on total climate system heat storage.
Wigley and Raper calculated that for a change in solar output of about 1.1 W/m2, roughly the change over one solar cycle, the direct change in Earth’s surface temperature should theoretically be in the range of 0.014°C to 0.025°C, which is undetectable.[11] However Judith Lean shows the observed surface temperature change, due to the increase in solar activity is about 0.1°C, 4 to 7 times what is expected and the increase in the upper atmosphere is 0.3°C, more than an order of magnitude more than expected from the change in radiation delivered to Earth.[12]
Lean also adds that were the Sun to become anonymously low, like during the Maunder Solar Grand Minimum (from 1645 to 1715) the expected global surface temperature cooling would still be less than a few tenths of a °C. This is only true if the cooling is linear with the change in radiation and if there are no unexpected amplifiers in the climate system, both assumptions are unlikely. We know that there are amplifiers in the climate system because the warming and cooling over the solar cycle are more than the theoretical change as Wigley and Raper have shown. The warming and cooling could be linear with the change in radiation, but there is no reason to assume this, Earth’s surface is complex and ever changing.[13]
More simply put, we know that the climate system somehow amplifies changes in insolation, but we don’t know exactly how. We know that solar output in the Maunder Solar Grand Minimum was less than now and the change from current solar output is small in percentage terms, but we have no idea what the effect on Earth’s climate of the change was, only that historical records and climate proxies suggest the effect was very large.
Known solar cycles correlate well with known climate cycles and are in phase with them.[14] Various hypotheses have been proposed to show how the Sun’s output changes over time periods of a thousand years or less. These are periods short enough to affect surface temperature from 1750, near the end of the Little Ice Age,[15] to 2019. The problem is that although a correlation between solar activity proxies[16] and climate change can be demonstrated,[17] a mechanism for the change in solar activity cannot. Attempts to explain solar variability by internal changes in the Sun only work in some cases. For example, Frank Stefani and colleagues have shown how the approximately 193-year de Vries solar cycle may be a beat period between the 22.14 Hale Solar Cycle and the 19.86-year orbit of the Sun around the solar system barycenter.[18]
Nicola Scafetta and Antonio Bianchini have shown that the orbits of the planets around the Sun correlate with solar activity proxies.[19] However, exactly how the small gravitational changes influence the solar dynamo is unclear. Thus, the hypothesis that solar activity is regulated within the Sun itself cannot completely reproduce observations, and planetary tidal forces seem too weak to accomplish the changes. These gaps in our knowledge of the mechanisms impede the acceptance that multi-centennial or multi-millennial solar changes can influence our climate. The Sun does change according to accepted solar proxies, like carbon-14 and beryllium-10 records, but the change mechanism is unclear.
The problem with the IPCC (and Arrhenius’) assumptions is that they ignore this empirical and theoretical evidence that solar output and/or solar energy input to the Earth’s climate system varies significantly over periods of a few hundred years. Their obsession with human greenhouse gases has blinded them to possible natural influences on climate change that they should be investigating. This is not to say that human greenhouse gases have no effect, it is likely that they do have some effect, but evidence suggests that natural influences, like the Modern Solar Maximum[20] and ocean oscillations,[21] play a significant role also.
There is a large body of peer-reviewed papers on the subject of solar activity as a climate change driver, yet AR6 ignores most of them. A very comprehensive review of recent research on the effect of the Sun on Earth’s climate is presented in a recent paper by Ronan Connolly and 22 colleagues.[22] In the paper they cite 396 papers on the connection between the Sun and climate, as opposed to only 68 in AR6 WG1,[23] both AR6 WG1 and the paper by Connolly, et al. were first published in 2021. This illustrates how selective the IPCC authors were in what research was considered in their report.
There is no valid reason to assume that the Sun was constant in its effect on Earth’s climate from 1750 until today. The usual reasoning is that observed changes in solar output are too small, in terms of power delivered per square meter (W/m2) relative to changes caused by increasing greenhouse gases, but as Irving explains these two sources of change are not comparable because the frequency content of the two sources are different.
Summary
The goal of this post is not to convince anyone that solar variability is responsible for all or part of modern global warming, a subject that is well covered elsewhere.[24] The point is that the IPCC reports and the CMIP models do not consider or investigate this possibility.
It is true that exactly how solar variability occurs and how it affects climate are not known, but the Sun does vary, and the variations correlate with climate changes. It is unlikely that climate changes are a direct result of the change in insolation, the solar changes are amplified by Earth’s climate system somehow.
We also do not know how much solar output has varied since 1650, the middle of the devastatingly cold Little Ice Age and the onset of the Maunder Solar Grand Minimum. There are several possible reconstructions of solar output since then. Figure 3 shows one of them constructed from an ice core beryllium-10 isotope record by Steinhilber, et al. The major climatic periods since 0AD are noted on it, and the Solar Grand Minima are identified.
Figure 3. The Steinhilber, et al. (2009) TSI reconstruction from 10berylium isotopes. The solar grand minima are identified, as well as the major climatic periods since 0AD.
The absolute values of delta-TSI (the change in total solar irradiation), in W/m2, plotted in Figure 3 are based on one of many possible modern TSI reconstructions (PMOD) and may not be accurate, but their values relative to one another are reasonable. None of the modern satellite TSI reconstructions are well supported, and the debate over which one is the best is furious and ongoing. See the discussion here for an introduction to the debate. It is best to not consider the absolute value of the Y axis in Figure 3, and consider it a TSI index, no one really knows how much TSI has changed, even over the satellite era. Further, as we’ve seen, how TSI changes relate to climate changes quantitatively is also not known. All we know is that they generally change together.
In Figure 3 we can see that colder periods, like the Little Ice Age, have some solar peaks and some warmer periods, and the Medieval Warm Period has solar lows. None of the climatic periods identified in Figure 3 were uniformly cold or warm. What we call the Little Ice Age, had some hot periods, and the Medieval Warm Period had cold periods (see the section after figure 2 here for references). Further, the correlation between solar activity and climate is not exact, nor is it uniform and synchronous over the whole planet. This is probably because of the effects of convection and atmospheric and oceanic circulation that I examine in the next post. Climate change is complicated.
The beginning and end of the climate periods identified in figure 3 are approximate, and mostly a judgement call. All the climate periods start and end at different times in different places.
However, we do know that some solar proxy reconstructions correlate well with climate proxies since 1850 (see Table 1 here),[25] and that alone is justification for additional research. Solar variability can explain anywhere from zero to almost 100% of the warming since 1850, depending upon the datasets used.[26]
This is a very brief summary of the evidence that changes in solar activity affect climate. More comprehensive discussions of possible mechanisms and the evidence for them are available.[27] Suffice it to say that this is an area of research that is too often ignored and brushed away as unimportant, especially by the IPCC. The sometimes excellent correlations in the peer-reviewed literature between solar activity and climate change alone should be enough to spur research. The fact that the IPCC has ignored these correlations is evidence of bias.
A point we will make many times in this series is that the Earth is not a uniform single thermodynamic body. Its surface is constantly changing. Treating it as a simple thermodynamic body, and one that can be characterized by a global average temperature is a huge mistake. Next, in part 4, we will discuss the potential impact of long-term changes in convection patterns.
(Lacis, Hansen, Russell, Oinas, & Jonas, 2013), (Lacis, Schmidt, Rind, & Ruedy, 2010), and (IPCC, 2021, p. 179) ↑
(McKitrick & Christy, A Test of the Tropical 200- to 300-hPa Warming Rate in Climate Models, Earth and Space Science, 2018), (McKitrick & Christy, 2020), (Lewis, 2023), (IPCC, 2021, p. 990) ↑
(Irvine, A Thought Experiment; Simplifying the Climate Riddle, 2023) and (Irvine, A comparison of the efficacy of green house gas forcing and solar forcing, 2014) ↑
(IPCC, 2021, p. 959), (Hansen, et al., 2005), and (IPCC, 2013, pp. 664-667) ↑
(Irvine, A Thought Experiment; Simplifying the Climate Riddle, 2023) and (Irvine, A comparison of the efficacy of green house gas forcing and solar forcing, 2014). Irvine provides estimates of the surface warming “efficacy” of greenhouse gas forcing versus solar forcing. ↑
An isotherm is a plane of equal temperature, in this case 22° below the ocean surface. ↑
(White, Dettinger, & Cayan, 2003). The change in radiation expected ocean temperature change is done with the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. The expected change in heat content assumes a solar cycle radiation change of about 0.1 W/m2. ↑
(Connolly et al., 2021), (Soon W. , et al., 2023), (Scafetta N. , Empirical assessment of the role of the Sun in climate change using balanced multi-proxy solar records., 2023), and (Soon, Connolly, & Connolly, 2015). ↑
(Behringer, 2010) and (May, Are fossil-fuel CO2 emissions good or bad?, 2022) ↑
(Scafetta N. , Understanding the role of the sun in climate change, 2023c) and (Scafetta N. , Empirical assessment of the role of the Sun in climate change using balanced multi-proxy solar records., 2023) ↑
(Scafetta & Bianchini, Overview of the Spectral Coherence between Planetary Resonances and Solar and Climate Oscillations, 2023b) and (Scafetta & Bianchini, The Planetary Theory of Solar Activity Variability: A Review, 2022) ↑
(Vinós & May, The Sun-Climate Effect: The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis (I). The search for a solar signal, 2022) and (Usoskin, Solanki, & Kovaltsov, 2007) ↑
(Vinós & May, The Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis (VII). A summary and some questions, 2022f), (Wyatt & Peters, A secularly varying hemispheric climate-signal propagation previously detected in instrumental and proxy data not detected in CMIP3 data base, 2012b), (Wyatt, Kravtsov, & Tsonis, Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and Northern Hemisphere’s climate variability, 2012a), and (Wyatt & Curry, 2014). ↑
(Connolly et al., 2021), (Soon, Connolly, & Connolly, Re-evaluating the role of solar variability on Northern Hemisphere temperature trends since the 19th century, 2015), (Crok & May, 2023), (Hoyt & Schatten, 1997), and (Haigh, 2011) ↑
(Soon, Connolly, & Connolly, Re-evaluating the role of solar variability on Northern Hemisphere temperature trends since the 19th century, 2015), (Connolly et al., 2021), (Soon W. , et al., 2023), (Vinós, Climate of the Past, Present and Future, A Scientific Debate, 2nd Edition, 2022), (Hoyt & Schatten, 1997), and (Haigh, 2011). ↑
USA Today published a supposed fact check claiming solar activity is not responsible for climate change. This is misleading at best, and foolishly wrong at worst. Various types of changes in solar activity have long been associated with changes in the Earth’s temperature and climate, on short, mid-term, and longer time scales.
The USA Today article by Kate S. Petersen, “The sun is mighty, but modern climate change is caused by human activity | Fact check,” presents itself as a fact check on a popular Facebook post. Wow! Responding to somebody’s certainly Facebook post is taking on hard hitting news from a reliable source! Still, when one examines the post, and compares it to the supposed fact check, the Facebook post is closer to the truth than Petersen’s and USA Today’s story.
“The implied claim is wrong,” Petersen writes. “While the sun significantly impacts Earth’s climate, it is not responsible for modern climate change.
“While the amount of solar energy striking the Earth fluctuates on an 11-year cycle, there hasn’t been a net increase since the 1950s, according to NASA,” Petersen continues. “However, global surface temperatures have risen dramatically.”
Petersen either is unaware of or simply ignored the fact that the 11-year solar cycles during which Sol’s magnetic fields flip are just one type of solar cycle that can drive temperature and climate changes on the earth. Sunspots and solar flares happen seemingly randomly though with some consistency, and 1,000 and 1,500 year cycles, and Milankovitch cycles also occur. All of these activities and others impact the Earth’s temperatures. As discussed at Climate at a Glance: The Sun’s Impact on Climate Change, historically through the present day, solar activity correlates quite well with climate change, better than changes in CO2. (see figures 1-3, below)
Figure 1. Changes in the Sun’s energy output since 1900. The Sun’s energy output has increased since the 1600’s with its most recent increase occurring during the 20th century. Source: J. Lean, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol 27, No. 16 (2000).
Figure 2: Temperature history according to the United Nations IPCC First Assessment Report. The top graph shows temperatures during the past 1 million years. The middle graph shows temperatures during the past 12,000 years. The bottom graph shows temperatures during the past 1,000 years. Present temperatures are at the far right. Source: IPCC First Assessment Report, United Nations, p. 202.
Figure 3. Temperature changes vs. changes in the Sun’s energy output and changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. The graph on the left shows 20th century temperature changes in blue vs. changes in the Sun’s energy output in red. The graph on the right shows 20th century changes in blue vs. changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions in red. W. Soon, et al., “Solar irradiance modulation of Equator-to-Pole (Arctic) temperature gradients: Empirical evidence for climate variation on multi-decadal timescales,” Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, 93, 45-56.
All the myriad ways solar activity impacts the Earth are not fully understood. Changes in solar output and their impact on solar winds are plausible explanations for temperature shifts on some time scales. Scientific research also suggests another type of forcing from the sun, its impact on volume of cosmic rays entering the earth’s atmosphere, which also impacts cloud formation and rainfall.
The point is, when Petersen and the government agencies she references state that the sun can’t be a factor in current climate change, they are only looking at one type of solar activity on a single time scale. Our solar system isn’t that simple.
To buttress her claim that the sun isn’t causing or significantly contributing to present climate change Petersen quotes Josh Willis, a NASA climate scientist, who told USA Today that “the amount of warming we see matches what we expect based on the increased CO2 we’ve added. The timing of the warming matches the timing of the CO2 increase caused by people.”
Willis’s claim doesn’t match the facts. The Earth began to warm in the mid- to late 19th century, before humans began emitting large significant amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, then after the 1940s, even as global industrialization and anthropogenic CO2 emissions were increasing at a rapid pace, the earth began cooling, leading some scientists and media outlets by the 1970s to warn that an ice age might be coming. Then, the Earth started warming in the 1980s, only to plateau or pause for 15 years beginning in the late 1990s, despite CO2’s steady increase. There has, in fact, been no good correlation between CO2 concentrations and temperature changes throughout the latter 20th and early 21st centuries.
Also, as we’ve discussed dozens of times at Climate Realism, CO2 driven temperature changes projected by climate models don’t, in fact, accurately reflect recent warming trends. Ground-level temperature measurements, weather balloon temperature measurements, and satellite temperature measurements are far lower than model projections built on the assumption that CO2 is the prime forcing factor for global warming. As a result, Willis is simply wrong when he says, “the amount of warming we see matches what we expect based on the increased CO2 we’ve added.”
The physics and factors that drive the Earth’s climate conditions are many, varied, and complex. The Earth is not the simple linear system described in climate models and presented by Petersen and USA Today. Carbon dioxide is likely one factor influencing the recent modest warming, but the sun and numerous other factors are almost certainly having an impact as well—arguably playing role greater than the increase in greenhouse gases.
In 2007, two Canadian scientists studying the effects of this cycle on the Pacific coast of North America successfully predicted the occurrence of a major El Niño event in 2015 based on lunar data. Remarkably, their prediction proved accurate.
The Earth’s oceans contain a vast mass of cold water beneath a thin layer of warm water, and the limited amount of mixing between them plays a crucial role in our existence. Tides, primarily influenced by changes in the moon’s orbit, are the main force behind this mixing, which has the potential to cool the climate. Keeling, who pioneered CO2 measurements, believed in this theory and predicted a cooling trend for the next decade. The impact of the 18.6-year lunar cycle on climate has been known for some time, but more recent research has revealed its influence on the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
The potential uniqueness of the Earth-Moon system
When astrophysicists discuss the abundance of potentially habitable planets around Sun-like stars, they often overlook a crucial fact: Earth’s formation was probably an incredibly rare event. About 4.5 billion years ago, our planet was born from a chance collision between early Earth and a Mars-sized planet. This serendipitous event explains two extraordinary features of Earth that may be exceptionally rare among other Earth-like planets. The first remarkable feature is Earth’s large metallic core, which generates a strong magnetic field despite the planet’s size. This magnetic field plays an important role in protecting our atmosphere from the solar wind, preventing the loss of light gases. The second unusual aspect of Earth is that it has an unusually large satellite for its size. Normally, the mass ratio between a planet and its satellite is about 1:10,000. However, the Earth-Moon system has a mass ratio of only 1:81, so close that it is sometimes referred to as a double planet.
The presence of such a large satellite exerts a powerful influence on Earth. It may have been essential to the presence and maintenance of complex life over time. The gravitational pull of the Moon stabilizes the tilt of the Earth’s axis. If a small change in the tilt of as little as 2.4° leads to a glaciation, Earth’s climate may have been too unstable for complex life to evolve under much larger tilt changes without the Moon.
The main effect of the Moon on the Earth is thus mediated by gravity, one of the most powerful forces in the universe, which has the capacity to significantly affect climate through the tides it produces in the ocean, atmosphere, and crust.
Tides’ effect on climate
The Moon’s orbit is tilted by 5° relative to the Earth’s orbital plane, also known as the ecliptic. The points where the Moon’s orbit intersects the ecliptic are called nodes. Eclipses occur only when the Moon is near a node and the line connecting the two nodes is aligned with the Sun. This alignment occurs approximately every six months, creating an eclipse season.
However, the Moon’s orbital plane around the Earth undergoes a gradual precession that causes one of the nodes to complete a full rotation relative to one of the equinoxes over a span of 18.61 years. This phenomenon is called the lunar nodal cycle. As a result of this precession, the 5° tilt of the Moon’s orbit is either added to or subtracted from the Earth’s axial tilt, resulting in a change in the Moon’s declination (its position relative to the equator). This declination varies from a maximum of 28.5° during a major lunar standstill to a minimum of 18.5° during a minor lunar standstill, completing a full cycle over the course of 18.61 years. These changes affect tidal patterns.
Tides are a complex phenomenon. As a result of the Moon orbiting the Earth in the same direction as the Earth’s axial rotation, it takes 24.84 hours for the Moon to be over the same position, so there is a semidiurnal tide every 12.42 hours. But this is only one of the many constituents of the tides, and it is called M2 (M for Moon and 2 for being semidiurnal). The next constituent in strength is due to the lunar-solar declination. It is diurnal with a period of 23.93 hours, and it is called the K1 constituent
Since the strength of this diurnal tidal constituent is directly related to the declination of the Moon over the Earth’s equator, we observe an 18.6-year cycle in the strength of the lunisolar diurnal tide. The semi-diurnal tides are also affected but to a lesser extent. For example, the amplitudes of the largest diurnal and semi-diurnal tidal constituents, K1 and M2, vary by 13% and 5%, respectively, over an 18.6-year cycle.
The lunar nodal cycle influences surface ocean temperatures through vertical mixing, which is influenced by increased or decreased tidal currents depending on the phase of the cycle. Numerous studies analyzing oceanic and atmospheric time series have identified an 18.6-year cycle in sea surface temperature and sea level pressure at various locations in the Pacific and other regions. There is a large body of literature on this topic.
In the Pacific, two notable low-frequency oscillations affect sea surface temperature and sea level pressure. The first and most widely known is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). However, there is also a shorter-period low-frequency oscillation known as the North Pacific Bidecadal Oscillation. This oscillation was first discovered in Alaska in 1998. A year later, in 1999, Shoshiro Minobe established a correlation between the PDO and the Bidecadal Oscillation, showing that both oscillations occur in synchrony.[1]
Figure 1a shows the North Pacific Index (NPI) during winter (December to February). The NPI serves as an indicator of sea level pressure changes in the Aleutian Low, a large region in the North Pacific. It has a strong correlation with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). When the PDO is reflecting colder temperatures, the NPI is showing higher pressure patterns and the other way around. The graph contains two data sets with Gaussian smoothing. The thick solid line emphasizes the long-term, multi-decadal variation, while the thick dashed line represents the shorter-term, bidecadal variation.
Figure 1. Multidecadal oscillations of the North Pacific Index. (a) Winter NPI data and two Gaussian smoothing. (b) Wavelet analysis.
Figure 1b from Minobe 1999 shows a wavelet analysis of the data. The graph illustrates time on one axis and frequency on another, while the third dimension is represented by the color scale indicating the pressure anomaly measured in hPa. This analysis allows us to identify two prominent oscillations: one occurring every 60 years and another every 20 years. In particular, significant climate shifts that cause sudden changes in the climate and ecology of the Pacific, such as the one in 1976 that triggered global warming, coincide with a simultaneous phase change in both oscillations.
Dave Keeling’s little-known tidal research
The ocean plays a critical role in moderating surface temperature variations on our planet. This fact is evident when comparing the greater seasonal temperature variations observed in continental climates compared to oceanic climates. Our existence depends on the lack of significant mixing between a thin layer of warm water, only a few hundred meters thick, on top of an icy cold ocean with an average temperature below 4°C. Even a small increase in vertical mixing could be catastrophic. It is clear, then, that vertical mixing in the ocean has the potential to be a climatic factor. The only two forces that can influence this vertical mixing are the wind and the Moon, as they contribute the necessary mechanical energy to the ocean. The Moon contributes about 4 TW (terawatts) of energy, while the wind contributes about 2 TW.
Charles David Keeling (1928-2005) was an outstanding scientist. In the late 1950s, he established a meticulous system for accurately measuring the background concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Keeling’s dedication quickly led to the discovery that these concentrations were steadily increasing. Despite several attempts to shut down the Mauna Loa station due to budget cuts, he single-handedly ensured its continued operation. Many considered this ongoing effort costly and routine, but Keeling’s persistence prevailed. In recognition of his remarkable scientific achievements, he was awarded the 2002 National Medal of Science, the highest lifetime honor for scientific achievement in the United States. The atmospheric CO2 record at Mauna Loa, known as the “Keeling Curve,” was designated a National Historic Chemical Landmark in 2015.
It is not widely known that Dave Keeling, in his later years of research, focused on the Moon as a means of understanding climate variability on Earth. While he firmly believed that CO2 increases were the cause of global warming, he sought to identify additional factors that could account for previous cooling periods that could not be explained by CO2 changes. Keeling theorized that changes in the Moon’s effect on ocean mixing could affect surface temperatures – a simple and scientifically sound mechanism. The only question is the magnitude of the effect of these changes.
Figure 2 is taken from a 1997 article by Keeling.[2] The strongest tides occur under certain circumstances: (1) during a Sun-Earth-Moon syzygy or alignment, (2) when the Moon is at its closest point to the Earth (perigee), (3) when the Moon is at one of the nodes of the Earth’s ecliptic, and (4) when the Earth is closest to the Sun (perihelion). On average, these conditions coincide about every 1800 years (1682, 1823, or 2045 years ± 18 years). However, harmonics and shorter periodicities occur when only a subset of these conditions are met.
The figure illustrates a 93-year cyclic pattern in tidal amplitude resulting from the succession of five nodal cycles. It’s important to note that tidal forcing does not increase continuously over decades. Rather, it increases on some days during a few lunar months when alignments occur, as indicated by the vertical lines in the figure. After that, the tidal forces may average out in the following years, only to regain strength 18 years later. The arcs connecting the peaks in tidal force are provided only as a visual aid to show the recurring pattern separated by an 18-year interval.
Figure 2. Timing of lunisolar tidal forcing since 1600 AD. Each event, indicated by a vertical line, gives a measure of the forcing in terms of the angular velocity of the Moon, in degrees of arc per day. The gray bars correspond to cool climate episodes.
This figure was reproduced in my book when I explained how tidal forcing is a likely candidate for triggering the Dansgaard-Oeschger events during glacial periods.[3]
Keeling and co-author Timothy Whorf made an interesting observation about the alignment of significant increases in tidal forcing over the last 400 years. They noticed a correlation between these periods and the cool periods documented in a separate publication by Phil Jones, the former director of the Hadley Climate Research Unit (HadCRU). These cool periods are represented by the gray bars at the top of Figure 2.
While it may be unreasonable to claim that the cooling climate of these periods was caused solely by the increase in tidal forcing, it is plausible to consider that tidal forcing played a role in enhancing the cooling effect beyond what would have occurred in its absence. They projected another peak in tidal forcing in the coming 2030s (labeled “D” in the figure). This should coincide with my projection of a temperature drop due to the coincidence of low solar activity and the transition of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation into its cold phase. Nature has yet to show its true strength to overconfident climate modelers.
The Moon as an El Niño predictor
In 2007, two Canadian scientists, McKinnell and Crawford, conducted a study examining the relationship between the lunar nodal cycle and various factors such as air temperatures, sea surface temperatures, and 400-year tree ring records along the Pacific coast of North America.[4] One notable finding they made was the correlation between winter sea surface temperatures measured at Scripps Pier in San Diego, California, and the tidal constituent K1, which influences diurnal tidal amplitude. Figure 3 shows this relationship.
Figure 3. Mean January sea surface temperature anomalies at Scripps Pier superimposed on the diurnal lunar nodal cycle. Red circles, marking some El Niño years, have been added to the original figure.
Remarkably, the strongest positive January temperature anomalies at Scripps Pier consistently coincided with a lunar nodal cycle minimum. On the other hand, the lowest anomalies were often, though not always, observed within a year or two of a nodal cycle maximum.
McKinnell and Crawford also observed a remarkable synchronization between the lunar nodal cycle and some of the largest El Niño events of the 20th century, such as those in 1940/41, 1957/58, and 1997/98. Attributing the cause of El Niño solely to the Moon would be inaccurate, as there are instances (e.g., 1972/73, 1982/83) when El Niño events do not align with the nodal cycle.
Nevertheless, the relationship between the 18.6-year lunar cycle and El Niño had already been described in a 2001 article and has been further emphasized in recent studies.[5][6] The explanation presented in the 2001 article suggests that tidal forces acting on the Pacific gyre modify the transport of cold water into the equatorial region, thereby influencing the likelihood and magnitude of El Niño events.
Even in the absence of a major El Niño event, the Scripps Pier data presented in Figure 3 show the presence of consecutive Niño episodes during lunar nodal cycle minimums. These are the Niño events of 1940/41 and 1941/42, 1957/58 and 1958/59, and 1976/77 and 1977/78.
Based on the available data, the authors suggest that the coincidence between the North American coastal sea surface temperature response to the lunar nodal cycle and El Niño events deserves greater attention, particularly if a strong El Niño occurs around 2015.
Given the challenges associated with predicting the occurrence of an El Niño event, let alone its magnitude, it is truly remarkable that the authors were able to successfully predict a major El Niño eight years in advance. Even more amazing is the fact that this prediction was based on the 18.6-year lunar cycle. It is recommended that anyone involved in ENSO forecasting take into account the accumulated knowledge of the Moon’s influence on ENSO. While not a hard and fast rule, it is apparent that the likelihood of a major El Niño event, or even successive Niño episodes, is higher for 2034. Such an event could potentially mitigate the expected cooling trend.
Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
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