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The power of the Sun - recent science shows we are moving into a cooling cycle

Science
#1

Hi folks,
I looked for information on the influence of sun spots on global climate and came across this rather large nugget.

Professor Valentina Zharkova is a rare example of intelligence humour and honesty, imo.
This video is difficult to follow because of the heavy Ukrainian accent but persevere and we have a prediction for the 2030’s and 2040’s of global cooling due entirely to the impact of solar cycles.

Nature magazine was pressured to withdraw her paper in 2019 but in 2020 she has established her facts ( ironically because she had time to do so under lockdown!) and shows the objections from IPCC scientists are groundless.

for text lovers here’s a report on some of this:

cheers

2 Likes
#2

Unfortunately, the linked text is rather mediocre hack work - speaking of “life expediencies”, for example, when it means life expectancies; and giving off a general air of superficial re-heating of half understood ideas.

Valentina’s presentation, otoh, feels like dynamite; and yes, for those who don’t like to spend an hour watching a vid, plus picking your way through a slightly challenging sound track: it’s well worth the bother! Jerm always delivers quality material.

What Zharkova is suggesting - the absolute primacy of the Sun in Earth’s climate regime, and the constantly-oscillating effects of solar cycles - feels much more convincing than the ‘anthropogenic excess carbon-dioxide’ line of thought.

We still have to admit, though, that our population overshoot is a new element in the equations; and it can’t just have no effect at all. But listening to Valentina it does seem to come - blurrily - a little clearer: that - once again! - we’re grossly over-estimating our, hom-sap’s, own effects - and our own agency - on the constantly-cycling life of the planet, operating as it must within this whole solar system, as it all dances complicatedly around - well, not so much round the Sun itself, but around the SIM: the centre of gravity around which the whole system mass, Sun included, oscillates in it’s complex reiterating patterns.

Makes you realise, suddenly, that the astrologers are definitely onto something, dunnit…?

Lately, I’ve been getting the hunch that we are facing two different questions here: one is what do we do about facing the shifts of the climate (however they’re caused!); whilst the other is what do we do to deal with the effects of the Long Descent; that non-climate-related separate issue of too many people chasing ever-decreasing non-renewable natural resources, such as metal ores, or - the biggy - fossil-hydrocarbon derived energy (with literally zero credible replacement energy sources anywhere to be seen). What do we do, in fact, about the insights of Tainter/Greer et al. into the - inevitable, it seems - collapse of complex societies?

The answer to these questions, in a general way, seems to be: prepare in good time for a life of involuntary simplicity (consumerism down the tubes; short commons for most getting much more common again; grow-yer-own being much more mandatory once again); and be equipped to deal with both hotter and colder times; because both look as if they’re waiting for us in the near future, one after the other…

Never thought of that, did we? :smile:

#3

There seemed to be a dearth of stuff on Zhakorova so I just grabbed what I could, I’ve since found Z’s website

https://solargsm.com/publications/

and this seemed a hopeful publication for people like me:

The summary is helpful but a bit long for this post but here is her conclusion:

“ 9. Conclusions
Changes in the total solar irradiance reaching the Earth atmosphere depend on regular changes of solar activity in the eleven-year sunspot cycles, in the grand solar cycles generated by a double dynamo and the changes in the Sun-Earth distances caused by orbital perturbations caused by the gravitational forces of the large planets, or solar inertial motion.
TSI reductions caused by a decrease of magnetic field (and solar activity) during GSMs occurring every 350 to 400 years are about 3 W/m2, or 0.22%. The TSI increases caused by changes of the Sun-Earth distances since 1600 imposed by SIM in the current Hallstatt cycle (1600 –2600 AD) reached 20 W/m2 (1.7%) in 2020, and is further expected to reach 25 W/m2 (1.8%) in 2400-2500. These orbital TSI variations definitely exceed the TSI variations caused by the eleven-year sunspot cycles, which approach about 1.3 W/m2, or 0.1% of TSI. Hence, in the current millennium M2 (1600-2600) a long trend is that the solar irradiance will keep increasing owing to the orbital SIM effects until about 2500. This would mean that a long-term trend (to year 2500) in the terrestrial temperatures can be added warming from this extra solar input separate from any other reasons. However, in this year of 2020 the Sun has entered a period of reduced solar activity: the Grand Solar Minimum (2020-2053). This quiet Sun is caused by a significantly reduced magnetic field, which is generated by the interference of double dynamo magnetic waves (Zharkova et al. 2015). This means that during the GSM solar irradiance will be reduced by about 3 W/m2, or 0.22%. Therefore, the reduction of solar irradiance caused by the GSM effect will work in opposition to the increase of solar irradiance caused by the orbital SIM effects.
For example, in millennium M2, because of the SIM effects, the baseline temperature (not including any terrestrial effects) is increased by 1.4C since 1700, while during the modern GSM1 it is expected to be lowered by 1.0 C giving the resulting temperature in 2020-2053 being only 0.4 °C higher than in 1700. After 2053, the solar irradiance and the baseline terrestrial temperature is expected to return to the pre-GSM level, then the irradiance and temperature will continue increasing because of the SIM effects combined with radiative transfer of solar radiation in the terrestrial atmosphere. This means the terrestrial temperature will continue increasing up to 2.9-3.0 C until the second modern GSM2 (2375–2415), during which the temperature can be expected to reduce again by 1.0 C to reaching magnitudes which are higher by 1.9-2.0 C than in 1700.
Based on our analysis, the usage of the principal components of the solar background magnetic field as a new and more accurate proxy of solar activity has opened new perspectives for reliable prediction of solar activity on short, medium and long-terms. This approach has allowed us to link these magnetic field variations to the variations of solar irradiance, which are associated with the inner solar processes and with the orbital effects on the Sun-Earth distances. The fundamental oscillations of solar irradiance, in turn, may be linked to the oscillations of the baseline terrestrial temperature, independent of any terrestrial processes of radiative transfer and heating.”

As to 1. If Z is right we need to prepare for a colder climate than usual but we survived 1645 to 1715 surely with greater prep we can do better today.
As to 2. my feeling is that the elite have already struck at our fertility through jabs food and pesticides so much so that numbers will begin to drop rapidly, soon. The current attacks on our economies could spell disaster for billions by the end of the year, just arranging the supplies of diesel engine oil to dry up within the next couple of months gives us only 10 weeks maximum of diesel powered delivery trucks before food supplies disappear! see:
https://www.sgtreport.com/2022/06/red-alert-entire-u-s-supply-of-diesel-engine-oil-may-be-wiped-out-in-8-weeks-no-more-oil-until-2023-due-to-force-majeure-additive-chemical-shortages/

Generally on population issues I feel we should minimise State interference in our lives and recall that for reincarnation to operate our descendants need to be born! Dramatic falls in population could lead to waiting lists of thousands of years if we’re lucky! Nature will ultimately decide anyway! :grin:

cheers

1 Like
#4

According to ‘The Limits To Growth’ - that oddly accurate crystal ball! - the population overshoot begins to turn down markedly in the middle decades of this century. This was not expected to have anything to do with any human attempts to reduce population; not that we have any, of course. Yet waddya know: fertility rates are already dropping in many places worldwide. Due, I suspect, to the ubiquity of pollution; which is also due to peak around this upcoming part of the century, and turn down again well before 2200.

I guess also that in the present zeigeist it won’t be too much for people to swallow that, yes indeed, our industrial activity will be turning down spontaneously too, in the same time frame, as we continue our already-begun slo-mo crash into The Limits buffers; leading to less output of CO2 - for whatever that’s worth. But quite possibly less food too, with its usual impact on birth/death rates.

Add to this a prospect of mean global temperatures zig-zagging up - and down! - over a 3 degree C range during the next few centuries, and I think you can begin to sense the outlines of a very different task for humans than just coping with an alleged runaway climate catastrophe: dealing with shifting weather patterns, and their effects on crop harvestablility, to look no further (hint: multi-species forest permaculture buffers vital food necessities against unpredictable extremes of weather rather well, actually; and another of its many useful products is perennially-self-renewing captured-sunlight fuel in the form of fire-wood). Seems as if the toughness and resourcefulness which got us through those previous upheavals in the weather over the past few thousand years will be called into play again soon…

I must say, this feels to me (oh what an UNSCIENTIFIC remark! :slight_smile: ) like a much more probable scenario than Chicken Little Greta’s nightmare: the Heat Death of the Earth.

#5

PS: Perhaps I should have said that we have no attempts to reduce population - that we know about and have consented to en masse. I still have no firm idea about whether the poisons-stabs are an unadmitted effort to spread infertility through the global population. The straws in the wind about that idea, going back some years, and with Herr Doktor Gates usually somewhere in the scene, are plentiful enough to give us pause…

1 Like
#6

Interesting article. Nice use of principal component analysis to construct a long term historical record. Now where have I seen that before…?

According to the paper, the Maunder minimum cooled the earth by up to 1 degree. And Zharkova estimates the coming grand solar minimum (GSM) to be less than that, so 0.5-0.75 degrees maybe?

CO2 driven climate change will warm the Earth by a minimum of 2 degrees, and up to 5 degrees.

The upcoming GSM makes almost no difference to the big picture. And it is estimated to last about 40 years and then start warming the earth again. Couple that with the (for example) 3.5 degrees of CO2 warming and its looking very, very bad.

So, no. Actual global cooling seems pretty fanciful, I’m afraid.

Cheers
PP

#7

“CO2 driven climate change will warm the Earth by a minimum of 2 degrees, and up to 5 degrees.”

God has told you that, has s/he, P? So we can be sure that it’s true? It must be reassuring to be able to be so certain of something. Personally, I sometimes find the inherent unpredictability of the future to be irksome, so I can see the temptation. :slight_smile:

All the same, the fact remains that we just can’t know that with any genuine certainty. And I’m afraid that many reading here, me included, will have become rather jaded lately with ‘technical expertise’ telling us what is certainly true, and what we must think. (That trend of popular disaffection from the pronouncements of scientific expertise is one which the historically-literate seer JMGreer foresees as increasing markedly in our time, btw…)

I say again: we don’t know what’s going to happen with future climate; though we can be reasonably confident that it will change, because it always does. (It would be a shock to our certainties, though, if the Thames started freezing over again in Winter, wouldn’t it? :slight_smile: ) Meanwhile, Valentina’s expertise is as - provisionally - valid as any other expert’s; and she outlines processes which suggest a) that anthropogenic CO2 releases are marginal in effect compared to the very old and magisterially-powerful cyclic solar/planetary dance that she studies; and b) the whole picture is complicated enough to be pretty sure to produce some surprises.

We just don’t know - and can’t know - with any certainty the exact outcome of all these influences…

Also, it’s been five or more degrees C warmer on Earth in the past, we think, yet life survived that; rather well, in fact. Even during our species life-span, there have been some stark climate shifts, which we’ve endured pretty well.

In any case, whatever’s going to happen, we shall have to endure it, because it’s a good bet that hom-sap isn’t going to do anything actually effective about it - even if we could have any noticeable effect on such large processes anyway. Perhaps we should think wistfully about controlling the - much larger than CO2 - effects of atmospheric water vapour, whilst we’re at it? Possibly Vulcans could do that; but human Earthlings? I doubt it.

Courage, bro! Our prospects could well be a fair bit less grim than your worries paint them. We don’t really know.

#8

Definitely a she, I think :wink:

Well, we are at one degree already and accelerating. 2 degrees is a baked in certainty, I think. It’s likely to ultimately be a lot more unless we take serious, sustained abs drastic action.

Some complex things are truly unpredictable, Rhis.

But not every complex thing is totally unpredictable.

A sinking ship is complex but predictable. That’s our situation

I take your points about temp changes in the past, and as before, I’m happy to agree. We’ve not had those temps with 9 billion people though. At least, I think not. If we have then or future will be a replay of the past and we will reach the brink of extinction. As we did the last time(s).

A cheery thought.

Anyway. The only point I’m making is that the GSM is only a fraction of the temp change we can expect from runaway co2 driven climate change

Cheers bwana