Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Solar cycle and climate

(Note: this is my article for The Lobbyist today)

In almost all literatures by the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) or man-made warming camp, natural factors that can influence planet Earth’s climate are either degraded or denied. Such natural factors include the Sun, Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), volcanoes, water vapor and natural GHGs, among the more prominent ones.

A solar scientist, Paul Vaughan, M.Sc., recently produced a new paper, The North Pacific and Solar Cycle Change. With few words and discussions, he showed three graphs plotting the solar cycle length (SCL) and sea surface temperature (SST) of North Pacific from 1855 to 2010. A solar cycle averages 11 years. Some solar cycles have shorter than 11 years, others, like the recent solar cycle 24, was longer, at about 12.5 years. The result of the SCL and SST North Pacific plot is very interesting as shown below:

There is almost a perfect fit between SCL and SST. Warming-cooling-warming-cooling cycles of SST correspond to longer-shorter-longer-shorter SCL cycles – which suggests that the Sun is the main driver of SST here, at least for the North Pacific.

A known solar physicist from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Boston, Dr. Willie Soon, also came up with the same result when he plotted total solar irradiance (TSI) and temperature in Greenland, Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, from 1880 to 2005. TSI is an indicator of solar activity or inactivity. More TSI means more active Sun, which means more warming.

Paul Vaughan also plotted SCL and the PDO. Pacific Ocean occupies almost one-third of the Earth’s total surface area, or bigger than all land surfaces and continents combined. Thus, PDO with its own internal dynamics is being watched as a contributing factor to the planet’s global temperature. The result of the SCL-PDO plot is also interesting.

There is also a close fit between SCL and PDO, except in years between 1945 to 1955. In general, warming-cooling cycles in PDO corresponded with longer-shorter PCL cycles, except in the middle of the last century. The above graph also shows that PDO has entered a cooling trend since around 1998 up to now.

Man-made warming literatures do not discuss these natural factors. From the “science is settled, debate is over” mantra, we were told that we should accept monstrous environmental regulations, (“dirty”) energy taxation, (“clean”) energy subsidies, endless global climate meetings, new climate bureaucracies created in many countries.

The idiocy and alarmism of man-made warming claims have caused lots of damage to our lives. Foremost of which is intellectual dishonesty.

No comments: