Policymakers! Listen up!

I was trained as an engineer and then did a degree in the History and philosophy of science.

I know how to calculate forces, I understand thermodynamics and radiative theory and I don’t ignore data inimical to any hypothesis.

After thirty years of monitoring and appraising the data, the global warming hypothesis and working out what really causes climatic change I’ve concluded that it ain’t CO2. The real causes of climatic change at the planetary scale are the enormous forces transferring energy between solar system bodies.

Jupiter and Saturn between them hold over 85% of the angular momentum of the system. Venus has, within an order of magnitude, the same gravitational force on the Earth-Moon system as Jupiter. The two of them have shaped the orbit of our Moon, whose tidal forces have a profound effect on the overturning circulation of Earth’s oceans, which contain 1000 times more heat than the atmosphere of which CO2 comprises 0.04%.

Nonetheless, the atmosphere has a profound effect on the rate at which the ocean gains heat from the Sun, and the rate at which is loses it back to space. But this effect has much less to do with the the composition of the atmosphere, and much more to do with the mass of the atmosphere, which in concert with oceanic heat capacity, raises the Earth’s average surface temperature some 90K above that of the Moon.

The motion of the large outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune also affects the activity cycles of our star, the Sun. Solar activity variation’s effect on Earth’s surface temperature is amplified by it’s effect on cloud cover, and this accounts for all the temperature change accurately observed and measured in the last 50 years.

The variation of CO2 in the atmosphere follows, does not lead, temperature variation at all timescales. It is an effect, not a cause of climatic change. I know this is hard for people who’ve been trained to believe in the Co2 caused global warming hypothesis throughout their schooling, and by the mass media, but facts are stubborn things, not to be ignored, but understood.

I’ll provide evidence and links for all the assertions in this comment as I find time. For now, just be aware that the Sun is entering a grand minimum, as it did in the 1600s and 1800s in the Maunder and Dalton minima. It doesn’t mean the Earth will be cold all the time, but we can expect some brutal winters and short growing seasons over the next 30 years or so. If our model is correct, the Sun won’t be as active after the end of the grand minimum as it was in the C20th until at least the end of the C21st.

Plan now for feeding and keeping warm a population of 66 million on a small island during the coming decades.