The Talkshop’s favourite weatherman Paul Hudson has been to see Mike Lockwood. It seems the fragile ‘consensus’ on the inability of solar variation to affect climate is coming apart. Now Lockwood is saying a new Maunder or Dalton type minimum is likely upon us, and could cause a general downturn in climatic conditions. This is what we’ve been telling the mainstream solar science community for the last four years. From Paul’s BBC blog:
It’s known by climatologists as the ‘Little Ice Age’, a period in the 1600s when harsh winters across the UK and Europe were often severe.
The severe cold went hand in hand with an exceptionally inactive sun, and was called the Maunder solar minimum.
Now a leading scientist from Reading University has told me that the current rate of decline in solar activity is such that there’s a real risk of seeing a return of such conditions.
I’ve been to see Professor Mike Lockwood to take a look at the work he has been conducting into the possible link between solar activity and climate patterns.
According to Professor Lockwood the late 20th century was a period when the sun was unusually active and a so called ‘grand maximum’ occurred around 1985.
Since then the sun has been getting quieter.
By looking back at certain isotopes in ice cores, he has been able to determine how active the sun has been over thousands of years.
Following analysis of the data, Professor Lockwood believes solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Paul Hudson is on TV at 7-30 tonight – BBC Yorkshire only (satellite-type services should have it if you’re elsewhere in the UK). It will be on i-Player for about a week after that.
”Weatherman Paul Hudson suggests that northern Europe could be entering a mini ice age, and explores the implications for supply chains and infrastructure.”
http://www.radiotimes.com/episode/cprnzd/inside-out–series-24—episode-9
‘Suggests’ sounds like those pro-IPCC climate papers: ‘new research suggests…planet doomed unless…’ type of thing 😉
Looking good from my point of view.
Interesting about the late insertion of qualifying terms about continuing warming in the background from human emissions.
I think that is mere speculation given the negative feedbacks observed and the thermostatic function of the Gas Constant described here:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/the-gas-constant-as-the-global-thermostat/
“He says such a change to our climate could have profound implications for energy policy and our transport infrastructure.
Although the biggest impact of such solar driven change would be regional, like here in the UK and across Europe, there would be global implications too.
…if projections are correct, the long term warming caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would eventually swamp this solar-driven cooling.
But should North Western Europe be heading for a new “little ice age”, there could be far reaching political implications – not least because global temperatures may fall enough, albeit temporarily, to eliminate much of the warming which has occurred since the 1950s.”
You can see more on Inside Out on Monday 28th October on BBC1, at 7.30pm.
============
And if projections aren’t correct, and the warming was actually caused by the active Sun in the later C20th, ithe cooling will be “Worse than we thought”.
Last time I ran into Professor Lockwood was at a Conference on the “Science and Economics of Climate Change” held at Downing College, Cambridge, in 2011.
He was explaining the role of water vapour as a positive feedback mechanism in the climate system.
In the following questions I asked him to comment on NOAA measurements of atmospheric water vapour, which had shown either no change, or a slight decrease, during the satellite (1979-present) and how these measurements could possibly support the concept of water vapour driven “positive feedback”.
I have never seen such a rapid transformation of urbane presenter to hand-waving blusterer in my life.
And this was a obvious question, for which he should have been prepared.
Maybe he has learned his lesson and is “preparing” his escape from the coming car crash.
“if projections are correct, the long term warming caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would eventually swamp this solar-driven cooling.”
“Swamp” a Maunder Minimum, they are clueless, even if the Greenhouse effect was true you would be trying to “trap” less energy. It would require some major amplification of what CO2 is supposed to be able to do.
Re the new Maunder: so, does the Maunder reduce from where you are, i.e. slow an engine down from whatever an engine is doing at the time, or does the Maunder bring you to a “Maunder” temperature, i.e. set the the engine speed?
The answer is extremely important. Even if we just had a mini-Maunder, the Dalton, for example: at its end, the global temperatures were about 0.8C colder than today. But the Dalton started from a colder position than today: if a “Dalton” started today, dropped 0.3 to 0.4C, we would only be back to the 1960s. Not a disaster.
The magnetism-GCR models we’re looking to now suggest a fundamental increase in cloud cover, not a reduction in solar energy output (though UV may be more important than credited). The cloud cover hypothesis says that the temperature goes to X if TSI and GCR are constant. But are they or will they?
Trends ARE predictions if the controlling variables remain the same and maintain the same proportional strength. But the temperature rise from the LIA seems to be more a combination of factors, of which solar spot activity is but one (related) factor.
Thoughts/
My comment to Paul Hudson:
‘About time that he jumped off the fence on this matter.
All we need now is for more physicists to accept that the current IPCC heat generation and transfer physics is juvenile nonsense.
Also, with a little bit of thought, it is easy to prove CO2-AGW is near zero and that the recent AGW, now saturated, was from Asian pollution reducing cloud albedo.’
Coincidentally, this Paul Hudson blog post appeared on WUWT 2 hrs after the Talkshop post. Anthony quotes Lockwood some years back re the LIA.
“The Little Ice Age wasn’t really an ice age of any kind – the idea that Europe had a relentless sequence of cold winters is frankly barking” – Dr Mike Lockwood Reading University
So, yes, this does look like an exit strategy.
as posted on WUWT:
“He (Mike Lockwood) found 24 different occasions in the last 10,000 years when the sun was in exactly the same state as it is now – and the present decline is faster than any of those 24.”
Highly controversial claim based on what?
Neither C14 or 10Be proxies can provide such resolution at millennial range, it’s only 11 years since significant SSN number.
….
Mike Lockwood is overdoing it a bit, not long ago he was taking the opposite stance; a wind vane science posture.
Doug: I think the depth of the temperature drop will relate to the historically high ocean heat content. If my hypothesis is correct, we’ll see a whopping big El Nino in the next couple of years, but it will leave OHC depleted, rather than quickly re-enhanced as with the ’98 El nino, because solar input is down.
Scute: Where the talkshop leads, others follow. Anyway, I’m fine with that, and Anthony has also linked this recent post:
on his new article here:
It’s Alas-ka for warmists.
http://kaltesonne.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/StateWide_Change_1949-2012_F.png
Lockwood of the “there is nothing unusual about this solar cycle” fame when replying to blog writers who had said there was.
So, a reliable source of sound info !!
How much temperatures drop may help pin down the atmospheres sensitivity to co2.
If temperatures drop to a Maunder level, then that would imply that the co2 sensitivity is approximately zero, but if temperatures only drop by the relevant amount from our high then that would imply that co2 has some effect.
But there is an outside chance of a drop below the Maunder given that Lockwood says that the drop in whatever he is measuring is happening faster than at any time during this interstitial.
The coming years are undoubtedly going to be interesting.
I believe it is bad etiquette to cut ones own post from one blog and paste it in another ?, but,
One in the eye for the paticipants of the secret BBC conference that declared the science settled and the need for balanced reporting over. A foolish mistake that may shorten many of their careers, hopefully.
Also if Lockwood has been able to determine that the current changes are the fastest seen, does he also have the data for the rates (and extents ?) for the others, presumably he does and if so it would be interesting to see if they show a distinct trend or not, and whether it can be extrapolated. Also whether these changes have a regular(ish) frequency(ies).
Perhaps we can take a shot at predicting the onset and rate of the next next glaciation. Though I guess the onset, may well have been when we reached the pinnacle of the Holocene.
Perhaps someone with a penchant for data might like to ask Lockwood for his data and do some analysis on it.
On air (BBC TV) Prof Lockwood raised his threat level of another Maunder Minimum-type spell to 25-30% from his previous estimate of about 8%, with mutterings about the lack of sunspots.
Paul Hudson interviewed a couple who were stuck in their own home for two and a half months by massive snowdrifts in the 1962-3 winter and showed some news footage of the conditions to give us the idea.
Stephen Wilde Says.. Interesting about the late insertion of qualifying terms about continuing warming in the background from human emissions. ”
They would have to explain ‘the pause’ and how that fits in to the CO2 = Warming calculations.
Tuesday, 21 April 2009:
Climate sceptics have gone further arguing that the Sun – rather than man’s activities – may be the main driver of climate change. The argument came to a head with the broadcast of Channel 4’s The Great Global Warming Swindle in 2007, which focused on the cosmic ray theory.
But speaking on the programme this morning Mike Lockwood from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory said the cycle of the Sun’s activity didn’t fit with the longer term trend towards global warming.
Solar activity began to tail off in the mid 1980’s – a period of steadily rising temperatures. If the Sun was responsible for global warming we would have seen a much more marked decline by now.
Dr Lockwood believes the latest data settles the debate. The Sun has an impact on global temperatures, but it’s not enough to account for climate change.
“If the Sun’s dimming were to have a cooling effect, we’d have seen it by now,” he says.
Thanks Vuk. Mike Lockwood needs to be aware of ocean heat retention and non-linear effects due to TSI being an agglomerated metric.
Hi TB
Sorry, I dropped the link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/today/tomfeilden/2009/04/could_a_cooling_sun_save_the_p.html
Lockwood is claiming misrepresentation by the BBC in his hommage to Mann on his Facebook page
He makes a point of reiterating that the Maunder minimum was regional not global and his references were made for the UK future scenario and not globally.
The BBC video http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03flj49/Inside_Out_Yorkshire_and_Lincolnshire_28_10_2013/ in no way indicates any differently.
The fact that he now has to roll over and wimper before the pack is a true indication of the state of the science.
Maunder minimum as regional or global as a separate issue, surely this risk factor for imminent adverse conditions should now be thrust as a major issue for our environmental and energy governmental departments, more so than decarbonising the economy.
Talking of Ice Ages, Maunder Minimums and the like I thought these two graphs would be of interest:
The first is a reconstruction of the Aletsch Glacier mass balance from Haeberli & Hoelzle 2003(?), article here. The reconstruction goes back to 0 AD and shows glacier advances (blue) and retreats (red) occurring about once every 250 years.
The second, from Vaquero 2007 here, plots “naked eye” sunspot counts since 200BC. It also shows a ~250 year periodicity and lines up the Aletsch glacier advances quite well with the Dalton, Maunder, Spörer, Wolf and Oort minima.
Looks like the Aletsch is about to turn round and start advancing again.
Once more the links have failed to appear as hypertext, so here they are in longhand
Click to access session_haeberli.pdf
http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0702068
Lord Beaverbrook says: October 29, 2013 at 1:51 am
“Lockwood is claiming misrepresentation by the BBC in his hommage to Mann on his Facebook page”
I couldn’t give a fig for who says what. Face book and Twitter are ‘social media’ and ‘may/may not’ quote what somebody said. However, this ‘does’ evoke ‘political intervention’ which can ‘mask’ the true nature of science.
Any ‘alteration’ to ‘climate’ (per se) is a deviation from ‘the norm’. If ‘global climate’ remained ‘unchanged’ during the ‘LIA’ (Little Ice Age, or other Sol minima), the ‘rest of the world’ warmed to maintain ‘the average’!
“Maunder minimum as regional or global as a separate issue, surely this risk factor for imminent adverse conditions should now be thrust as a major issue for our environmental and energy governmental departments, more so than decarbonising the economy.”
I concur. Too many coal mines were made inaccessible by closure. Not enough was done to improve efficiency for a carbon economy.
Best regards, Ray.
@ AlecM
You still looking at this thread?
Speaking of getting more physicists involved, I have a few thoughts to bounce off you. I wholly agree with your approach.
@ AlecM, if you are still ‘there’.
I decided to just go ahead and answer back to Ball4 blaming you of not knowing modern physics, see:
@ wayne says: October 29, 2013 at 2:18 AM.
I would be curious if you agree or disagree and where with what I laid out for him on that subject, that is my current understanding of the physics involved and I think it agrees with yours.
Don’t really know how to reach you on bouncing threads, so here is my attempt one. 😉
I wouldn’t trust Lockwood even if he suddenly appeared to agree with me (perhaps especially if he appeared to agree with me).
Mainstream solar-climate “leaders” (they’re anything but) totally & completely burned our trust.
We’ve endured so much dark ignorance &/or deception from these people. What sensible reason could there possibly be to suddenly become foolish enough to trust them?
As before, we can take personal responsibility and exercise independent judgement.
To be clear: Even if Lockwood appeared to agree exactly with everything I’ve ever said, I would remain deeply suspicious of him. Trust = zero.
They still can’t bring themselves to say that if ‘natural variation’, for whatever reasons, can cause temperatures to go down it can equally cause them to go up, due to whatever reasons.
They want to say it can only act as a temporary brake on warming and never be the cause of it, but where’s the logic in that argument?
It didn’t take much for the D. Express to start shouting about Siberian winters:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/439701/Now-get-ready-for-an-Ice-Age-as-experts-warn-of-Siberian-winter-ahead
How often can the “underlying trend” meme be pushed? At some point, it’s going to need to appear in the observed data, or it will be revealed as the hogwah it is.
Amusing comments on Mann’s fb page where Paul Hudson has been accused of misrepresenting Lockwood. Paul points out it’s Mann’s own research which shows 0.3-0.4C drop in global temp during LIA. Mann doesn’t reply…
@Wayne: thank you for your exposition of the physics. I am an engineer so think from my practical experience measuring coupled convection and radiation. What Ball4 and the other Climate Alchemists claim is a perpetual motion machine of the 2nd kind, 160 W/m^2 in, 493 W/m^2 out including the 17 W/m^2 convection and 80 W/m^2 evapo-transpiration.
They then wrongly claim Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation applies at ToA (meaning the atmospheric window emission from surface and cloud tops is supposed to emit bidirectionally from ToA) so reduce that 493 W/m^2 by 238.5 W/m^2 = 254.5 W/m^.Taking off the convection + evapo-transpiration leaves 157.5 W/m^2, the ‘Clear Sky Greenhouse Factor’. This it total bunkum.
You can easily prove RFs add vectorially. Just set up two opposing in phase waves of the same amplitude and you get Poynting Vector = power = const. amplitude^2 for each wave. Add them vectorially and you get zero power transferred by the resultant standing wave. If the waves have different amplitude, only the net PV can do work. For thermally incoherent waves of the same amplitude you get net power cycling about zero from -4 const amplitude ^2 to +4 const amplitude ^2. Different amplitude waves I’ve a zero offset.
The correct physics of the conservation of energy in the material and EM worlds is qdot = -Div Fv where qdot is the monochromatic rate of heat transfer per unit volume and Fv is the monochromatic radiation flux density. Integrate this over all wavelengths and for a finite volume in which the original Fv totally disappears, and you get the difference between two S-B equations. So net flux goes from hot to cold. Heat transfer from hot is its negative, which few realise. This means for the atmosphere – surface couple that there is no energy creation, a breach of Maxwell’s equations and the Principle of Conservation of Energy.
How much longer do we have to tell these dorks that they cannot defeat the 1st Law of Thermodynamics?
AlecM and wayne.
Its all very well going into all those equations and deep scientific principles but isn’t it very simple at heart ?
The energy exchange between surface and atmosphere is of course net zero but it does require an allocation of surface heat (KE) to keep it running. The exchange of energy is from adiabatic uplift and descent .
Separately the system needs the surface to be warm enough to generate energy out to space equal to energy in from space.
Add both components together and the surface needs to be 33K warmer than it would be from the simple S-B equation.
If one then proposes an additional element of DWIR from atmosphere to surface then it is that which upsets balance and offends the S-B equation.
AGW radiative theory is therefore illogical and in breach of both the Laws of Thermodynamics and the S-B equation.
It is necessary to realise that the sole purpose of that extra 33K at the surface is to keep the weight of the atmosphere suspended off the surface.
Once one realises that it should all fall into place.
@ Stephen: “The energy exchange between surface and atmosphere is of course net zero …”
Why in the world would you think that? No, there has to always be some ≈(158 to 161) minus 40 imbalance from the surface upward into the atmosphere, for if the window non-interacting IR RF upward is correct, the atmosphere must provide some 198 + that 40 outward to space or you will never be able to make sense of the balances involved.
And then you bring in the 33°C which is likewise incorrect, it is more like 126°C.
@ AlecM and Stephen:
That 198 is the upward and the downward potential that disproves Trenberth’s incorrect 396 up and 333 down, that is not correct at all as Alec has pointing out.
It works very approximately like this, I am going to merge Ferenc Miskolczi’s work, with Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller’s work with a few figures from Kevin Trenberth’s figures that some are measurements in his papers and are approximately correct, Miskolczi uses close to the same figures:
What supports the 396 W/m² at the surface? Good question! We all know if you know the temperature you can calculate the upward potential via Stefan-Boltzmann equation against zero Kelvin. But that does not say where the energy that maintains that potential originates, right?
Nikolov and Zeller’s insight is part of that supporting potential. They used and albedo of 0.88 and an operational emissivity of 0.955 to come up with their super-conducting calculations to a temperature of ≈154 K. But those are not the correct values of the real Earth, there the albedo is close to 0.30 and an operational emissivity of about 0.61. Using their many-time-proven-correct integration you get instead a temperature of 163.2 K providing potential of about 40 W/m². Also pressing onto the surface is ≈158 W/m² of solar SW. You also have about 199 W/m² of downwelling, not radiation but LW radiative potential (alecM supplied the term, I like it! potential). Sum those three sources of potential and you have your 397 W/m² and know know where that potential that supports the temperature originates.
Now what of this potential that is actually used by the surface? You have about 80 in transpiration lifted by about 19 W/m² of sensible thermals, there is 99. You have about 40 + 20 W/m² in LW of which 40 is “window” LW and does not interact and the 20 that is absorbed by the atmosphere. I come up with 159 W/m² and not 161 but accept my correction for this a rough roundoff to even values without decimals of the balance sheet in front of me. The sum of those three is 158 W/m² upward. This is roughly accepted by all.
In the atmosphere you also need to add the ≈80 w.m² absorbed. Sum it up, that pool of potential in the atmosphere is right at 397 and half presses upward, half downward that is in essence what defines the window LW. That mean 397/2+40 goes to space, 238.5 W/m² and 397/2 of the downward potential prevents that much of the surface LW potential from ever even leaving the surface.
There, it all sweetly balances, all of it.
Of Miskolczi his the optical depth of the LW window in reelation to what from the surface is capable of supplying, the 397/2 + 40 + 20 = 258.5 so the 40 window / 258.5 potential gives 0.1541 and converting to tau is -ln(0.1541) that you see throughout his derivations in his papers. It all comes together.
Oh, that -ln(0.1541) calculates to Miskolczi’s optical thickness or depth tau of 1.87 and that tau is not changing at all with increased carbon dioxide. Albedo variances… now that’s different story and changing it warps all of the figures that I used above while still kept all balanced.
Professor Mike Lockwood seeks to correct those who, like Paul Hudson, misrepresent his work: “Unfortunately, I now find myself in the position of being cited as predicting that the current rapid decline in solar activity will plunge the world into a “Little Ice Age”. This is very disappointing as it is not at all supported by the science.”
Read his article at http://www.carbonbrief.org/5162.aspx
On that Michael Mann FB link above, Lockwood has written that he is ‘trying to counter the mischief and nonsense’ arising apparently from his decision to speak to Hudson, providing the link to his 1/1/13 post on the Carbon Brief blog. It looks more like a damage limitation exercise to me – and not a very well thought out one at that, which IMO only serves to further erode his reputation and scientific credibility.
wayne.
Of course the surface / atmosphere energy exchange does vary about the mean but the purpose of that ‘extra’ energy at the surface is simply to keep the weight of the atmosphere suspended off the ground.
Therefore it is neither available nor required to match incoming with outgoing at ToA.
You can quibble about the exact amount of ‘extra’ energy at the surface but whatever amount it is beyond the S-B expectation is simply the balance needed to keep the atmosphere suspended.
You can then go on to involve other types of energy transfer within the atmosphere but that just adds extra layers of complexity.
The simplest solution is that the surface temperature in the form of kinetic energy has to achieve two separate functions and the energy budget within the atmosphere and between surface and atmosphere is juggled as necessary to ensure that ToA radiative balance is maintained long term.
That ‘juggling’process is implemented by density differentials within the atmosphere hence the vital function of adiabatic ascent and descent in keeping the whole system balanced.
If one changes GHG amounts the atmosphere simply expands or contracts as necessary to divert more or less KE to PE to neutralise any thermal effect on the surface.
Only by changing the weight of the atmosphere can one alter the surface temperature because then more energy is required at the surface to continue holding the weight of the atmosphere off the ground to the height determined by ToA energy input.
Johnrussel: Show that Paul Hudson misrepresented Lockwood by quotation please.
Mike Lockwood has made it very clear he believes his words were misrepresented by Hudson. Certainly the sceptic blogosphere’s articles—all based on Paul Hudson’s original article—have interpreted Hudson’s words in a way that misrepresents Lockwood. Any implication that Hudson is blameless should be open to serious question.
More here: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2013/10/28/lockwood-hudson-beeb-maunder-sigh/
[Reply] Ah, the website of wiki-comedian Billy Connolley. Not a place where you’ll find an unbiased view.
I don’t think Mike Lockwood has made it very clear at all exactly who has misrepresented him and in what way. Certainly on FB he complained about Hudson talking global LIA when he had made it clear that he was only talking about a regional temperature drop, but Lockwood failed to qualify this accusation. Fact is, Hudson DID talk global cooling – or the possibility thereof – but was careful to separate this from Lockwood’s work, referring instead to Mann et al 2001. Paul Hudson can hardly be blamed if other people and publications misrepresent what HE has reported and therefore misquote Lockwood. Personally, I think Hudson has been treated rather shoddily by certain sections of the blogosphere and cli-sci community merely for highlighting the possibility of natural climate change (cooling) in Europe and extending this (not without some justification) to the possibility of global cooling – still equivalent to committing heresy it would seem according to the opinion of some people.
Jaime says; “I don’t think Mike Lockwood has made it very clear at all exactly who has misrepresented him and in what way”.
Of course Mike Lockwood has not gone into details. He’s a scientist concerned just about the fact his words are being taken out of context, unwittingly—or wittingly—misrepresenting his work. He doesn’t actually care who said what, where and to whom: he only wants to ensure his views are heard clearly, without distortion. Hence his ‘The Carbon Brief’ article at http://www.carbonbrief.org/5162.aspx.
Paul Hudson’s ‘interpretation’ is an irrelevance; but unfortunately it’s been repeated around the blogs and newspapers, increasingly becoming more and more distorted like some giant internet game of ‘Chinese whispers’ (304 times online, at the latest count). Meanwhile, Mike Lockwood’s real story will be swamped by those seeking to obfuscate.
[reply] Paul Hudson asked Mike Lockwood directly on Mickey Mann’s facebook page to specify in what way he had been ‘misrepresented’. He was unable to do so. Your huffing and puffing is the irrelevance here. TB
Leif Svalgaard also thinks that solar activity is more likely to drop to Maunder, rather than Dalton levels, though he makes no predictions as to resultant temperature – not his line of work.
If temperatures drop impressively, then Lockwood may come to rue the day he said “This is very disappointing as it is not at all supported by the science.”
It could almost be called another Vinerism, perhaps this one would be called a FlipFlopism.
Bring on that Landscheidt minimum little ice-age repeat.
Here’s how Paul Hudson finished his blog on the day of the BBC TV broadcast:
‘But should North Western Europe [sic] be heading for a new “little ice age”, there could be far reaching political implications – not least because global temperatures may fall enough, albeit temporarily, to eliminate much of the warming which has occurred since the 1950s.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/posts/Real-risk-of-a-Maunder-minimum-Little-Ice-Age-says-leading-scientist
Seems clear enough, having already said:
‘Although the biggest impact of such solar driven change would be regional [sic], like here in the UK and across Europe, there would be global implications too.’
If oceans anywhere cool significantly, the effect of those conditions must move around the globe in time. It’s not spin or whatever to say so, surely?
Looks like Mr Russell’s unsupported assertions aren’t going to be backed up with quotes then. The red pen will be wielded soon.
John Russell, you say that, as a scientist, Lockwood is only concerned that his real research gets across to the public, undistorted in its original form. Then he should be scrupulously clear about how exactly he has been misrepresented by the media and in what manner. I get the impression that he and his supporters, such as yourself, are more concerned about the way this story MIGHT develop than about the actual facts around this supposed misrepresentation by Mr Hudson and the Daily Express.
If Lockwood was truly concerned that he has been misrepresented at this early stage and is truly committed to clarifying exactly the significance of his latest research for future possible climate in the UK, he would go to a mainstream media publication and request column inches to say exactly, in his own words, how he interprets the results of his research. I’m sure the Guardian would oblige, or the Independent, even maybe the Telegraph. All we have so far are discontented mutterings on FB and a quite frankly rather confusing rebuttal on Carbon Brief.
This might labour a point but I think it gets to the nub of the issue.
In Paul Hudson’s latest blog post, which is a clarification, he says:
“At the end of my article I move away from what I discussed with Professor Lockwood about the regional effects a new maunder solar minimum may have in the UK, and considered possible global impacts.”
I always thought that was where the crack was- the end of the article, third to last paragraph in the original post which reads:
“Although the biggest impact of such solar driven change would be regional, like here in the UK and across Europe, there would be global implications too.”
That wasn’t quoting Lockwood but because he didn’t quote him anywhere else either, preferring reported speech, that set the reader up for thinking this was another musing from Lockwood (I didn’t think that but it jolted me and I had to reread it). This was especially likely to trip up the reader, coming straight after a short sentence saying “He says” [it will make for difficult for transport policy]. The reader is likely to join those two sentences together and treat them as one batch of reported speech from Lockwood.
The fact that the “He says” sentence is in a different paragraph is no excuse: the BBC have a tediously ungrammatical tendency to divide almost ALL their sentences into separate paragraphs. I read them (as they usually need to be read) as a single stream of thought until the true paragraph break is obvious. Here, it was not all that clear. Hudson started a stream of thought with:
” Professor Lockwood doesn’t hold back in his description of the potential impacts such a scenario would have in the UK.
“He says such a change to our climate could have profound implications for energy policy and our transport infrastructure.”
….and then he chucks in the next paragraph that gets read as the next sentence:
“Although the biggest impact of such solar driven change would be regional, like here in the UK and across Europe, there would be global implications too.”
True, he might have written, “He also says” if that was also attributable but in a post chock-full of reported speech and rat-at-at paragraph sentences, that is how half the readers took it.
I would give Paul Hudson the benefit of the doubt here, even though it resembles a perfect, Daily Mail-style sleight of hand: the trick segue. I suspect he is so into this salami slicing of paragraphs that he long ago forgot how they might confuse the reader.
It’s THE BBC Style Guide for journalists that’s to blame for this. Rip it up and and revert to proper, recognisable English!
This is very funny. In 2007 (in his infamous paper with Frohlich) the claim was 1987, now it is 1985. I wonder why this profs don’t learn statistics before they go with their word out.
In fact the solar activity trend rose from mid 1970s well into mid 1990 well over SSN 10 per decade -as anybody can check with SSN data http://woodfortrees.org/data/sidc-ssn/from:1975/to:1995/trend, the same does the SSN integral – http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1970/to:2014/offset:-64.68018/integral/mean:133/normalise/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1970/to:2014/offset:-64.68018/integral/normalise, which only has even it is just proxy of solar activity direct relation to Earth surface heat content – again, rise until 1998 and not much descent until mid 2000s – which happens to exactly coincide with the last “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming” period – which has now the little petty problem for IPCC that it is not in “hiatus”, but ended – as anybody can check with all the surface temperature anomalies since the 1998.
So I really don’t know where the Lockwood takes the 1985 figure from – and I very much suspect from nowhere else than his a*s.
A “grand maximum” in 1985 – hmmm he must talk about other solar system, because in our solar system there happens that there was solar minimum in 1985 – which nevertheless doesn’t in any case mean the solar activity trend didn’t rise another more than decade and stopped almost exactly as the Hansens and Jones riged temperatures stopped.
My latest attempt at making some sense of what’s happening was to go through the science papers of the last living Hale and Janssons Medals winner ( (DeJager for solar science excellence) and of course, interviews, edits, etc with him.
The short summary here is that the sun is effected internally by Gleissberg Cycles steered chaotically by a Hale magnetic Cycle (high and low phases within c. 118 yr framework). These sort of overlap and in and out of phase, can sometimes “kick” the sun into chaotic high or low phases at the more-or-less sun surface (c. 125,000 miles in on a c. 800,000 mile false diameter). The magnetic flux is then steered by solar minimum and maximum ‘mechanisms” in the false surface (tachocline) Observationally all this behavior is there. Laid out on historical proxy data, it seems as if in 1924 there was a chaotic spike phase UP which ended when in 2009, there was a dramatic one DOWN.
So we had been in a short GRAND maximum phase since 1924
The chaotic spike down appears to be calling in a Dalton phase ( a short 10-20 yr low solar magnetic phase (not considered GRAND minima types by DeJager ). What substantiates a Dalton is that a long-term DeVries-type cycle, called the Hallstatt, just began its c. 2,000 POSITIVE phase. Historical proxy data shows that these phases never have GRAND minima from the sun.
So from a solar perspective, earth might get off the hook. Still, there are anthropogenic concerns about ozone layer pollution build up and the purely geophysical phenomena (lithospheric volcanic eruption, tsunamis etc.) which contribute to cooling.or wind turbulence or both
I suggest you read my latest book on what may be happening globally (c. 15 bucks or 4 for your tablet/kindle):
http://www.prweb.com/releases/StevenHaywoodYaskell/GrandPhasesOnTheSun/prweb11187693.htm
Cheers/ S.H. Yaskell