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Hello Jennifer,

My paper, “Rhodes Fairbridge and the idea that the solar system regulates the earth’s climate”** has now been published.

Here is the link:
http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/ics2007/pdf/ICS176.pdf

I would be most grateful if you would post it on your website. I am sure it will be of interest to your readers.

As is usual for a high quality international scientific journal, my article was subject to a vigorous peer review process, to which I had to respond before the reviewers and the editors would agree to publish it. This having been done, the paper has now been published.

Yours sincerely
Richard Mackey
—————————————

Here is the abstract:

Rhodes Fairbridge died on 8th November, 2006. He was one of Australia’s most accomplished scientists and has
a special connection with Australia. In July, 1912 his father Kingsley established Fairbridge Village near Perth.
It contains a chapel of elegant simplicity designed by one of the world’s most famous architects of the time, Sir
Herbert Baker, as a labour of love to commemorate Kingsley. Rhodes is one of the few scientists to research the
sun/climate relationship in terms of the totality of the sun’s impact on the earth (i.e. gravity, the electromagnetic
force and output and their interaction). When the totality of the sun’s impact is considered, having regard to the
relevant research published over the last two decades, the influence of solar variability on the earth’s climate is
very strongly non-linear and stochastic. Rhodes also researched the idea that the planets might have a role in
producing the sun’s variable activity. If they do and if the sun’s variable activity regulates climate, then ultimately the planets may regulate it. Recent research about the sun/climate relationship and the solar inertial motion (sim) hypothesis shows a large body of circumstantial evidence and several working hypotheses but no satisfactory account of a physical sim process. In 2007 Ulysses will send information about the solar poles. This could be decisive regarding the predictions about emergent Sunspot Cycle No 24, including the sim hypothesis.

According to the sim hypothesis, this cycle should be like Sunspot Cycle No 14, and be followed by two that will
create a brief ice age. During the 1920s and ‘30s Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology published research about
the sun/climate relationship, especially Sunspot Cycle No 14, showing that it probably caused the worst drought
then on record.

And an extract from the paper:

“The earth’s atmosphere contains several major oscillating wind currents that have a key role in the regulation of the earth’s weather and climate. These wind currents include the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO); Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO); the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO); the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO); the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO); the Atlantic Multdecadal Oscillation (AMO); the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD); and the Arctic Oscillation (AO); and the northern and southern polar vortices, which are two permanent cyclones at the poles. FAGAN (1999), (2000) and (2004) has shown how the climate changes rendered by these global atmospheric systems have resulted in major historic changes to cultures and societies throughout the world since the dawn of history.

LABITZKE et al. (2005), COUGHLIN and KUNG (2004) and CORDERO and NATHAN (2005) report that the sunspot cycle drives these large-scale oscillating wind currents. For example, strength of the QBO circulation and the length of the QBO period varies directly with the sunspot cycle. COUGHLIN and KUNG (2004) also conclude that at a range of atmospheric heights and at all latitudes over the planet, the atmosphere warms appreciably during the maximum of the sunspot cycle, and cools during the minimum of the cycle.xix VAN LOON, MEEHL AND ARBLASTER (2004) established that in the northern summer (July to August), the major climatological tropical precipation maxima are intensified in solar maxima compared with solar minima during the period 1979 to 2002.

NUGROHO and YATINI 2006 report that the sun strongly influences the IOD during wet season in the monsoons climate pattern; that is, the December to February period. CAMP and TUNG (2006) found that a significant relationship exists between polar warming and the sunspot cycle. ZAITSEVA et al. (2003) found that the intensity of the NAO depends on solar activity. ABARCA DEL RIO et al. (2003) have found that the patterns of variation between indices of solar activity, the Atmospheric Angular Momentum index and Length of Day show that variations in solar activity are a key driver of atmospheric dynamics. The United States Geological Survey agency found that changes in total solar radiant output cause changes in regional precipitation, including floods and droughts in the Mississippi River basin.xx The tropical oceans absorb varying amounts of solar radiant output, creating ocean temperature variations.

These are transported by major ocean currents to locations where the stored energy is released into the atmosphere. As a result, atmospheric pressure is altered and moisture patterns are formed that can ultimately affect regional precipitation.

SCAFETTA et al.(2004) and SCAFETTA and WEST (2005) have found that the earth’s temperature periodicities, particularly those of the oceans, inherit the structure of the periodicity of solar activity. WHITE et al. (1997) and REID (1991) have found that the sunspot cycle produces periodicities in the oceans’ temmperatures. This research shows that sea surface temperatures in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans, whether taken separately or combined, follow measures of solar radiant output derived from satellite observations and the sunspot record.

The sun’s separate impacts on the atmosphere and the ocean, and the complex non-linear interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean, is another process that amplifies the non-linear impact of the sun on our climate. Given that solar activity is a key determinant of ocean temperature, the decline on solar activity measured over the last decade should give rise in due course to a cooling of the oceans.

Read the full paper here: http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/ics2007/pdf/ICS176.pdf

** MACKEY, R., 2007. Rhodes Fairbridge and the idea that the solar system regulates the Earth’s climate. Journal
of Coastal Research, SI 50 (Proceedings of the 9th International Coastal Symposium), 955 – 968. Gold Coast,
Australia, ISSN 0749.0208

From Benny Pieser’s CCNet:

Mistreatment of the economic impacts of extreme events in the Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change

Abstract

The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change has focused debate on the costs and benefits of alternative courses of action on climate change. This refocusing has helped to move debate away from science of the climate system and on to issues of policy. However, a careful examination of the Stern Review’s treatment of the economics of extreme events in developed countries, such as floods and tropical cyclones, shows that the report is selective in its presentation of relevant impact studies and repeats a common error in impacts studies by confusing sensitivity analyses with projections of future impacts. The Stern Review’s treatment of extreme events is misleading because it overestimates the future costs of extreme weather events in developed countries by an order of magnitude. Because the Stern Report extends these findings globally, the overestimate propagates through the report’s estimate of future global losses. When extreme events are viewed more comprehensively the resulting perspective can be used to expand the scope of choice available to decision makers seeking to grapple with future disasters in the context of climate change. In particular, a more comprehensive analysis underscores the importance of adaptation in any comprehensive portfolio of responses to climate change.

Roger Pielke Jr

Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado, 1333 Grandview Ave, Campus Box 488 boulder, Co 80309-0488, USA
Received 5 March 2007; revised 21 May 2007; accepted 22 May 2007. Available online 15 August 2007.

Global Environmental Change

“In its Chapter 5 the Stern Review concludes, “The costs of climate change for developed countries could reach several percent of GDP as higher temperatures lead to a sharp increase in extreme weather events and large-scale changes.” (Stern, 2007, p. 137). This conclusion cannot be supported by the Review’s own analysis and references to literature. One error is a serious misrepresentation of the scientific literature, and the second is more subtle, but no less significant. The serious misrepresentation takes the form of inaccurately presenting the conclusions of an unpublished paper on trends in disaster losses. The second error is more complex and involves conflating an analysis of the sensitivity of society to future changes in extreme events, assuming that society does not change, with a projection of how extreme event impacts will increase in the future under the integrated conditions of climatic and societal change. The result of the errors in the Stern Review is a significant overstatement of the future costs of extreme climate events not simply in the developed world, but globally-by an order of magnitude.

In light of these errors if the Stern Review is to be viewed as a means of supporting a particular political agenda, then it undercuts its own credibility and this risks its effectiveness. If instead the Stern Review is to be viewed as a policy analysis of the costs and benefits of alternative courses of actions on climate change, then at least in the case of extreme events it has missed an opportunity to clarify the scope of such actions and their possible consequences, and arguably misdirects attention away from those actions most likely to be effective with respect to future catastrophe losses. In either case, on the issue of extreme events and climate change, the Stern Review must be judged a failure. This short paper documents these errors and suggests how an alternative approach might have been structured.”

Yes, not a recent newspaper article, but the page 2 headline in the Nov. 2, 1922 edition of The Washington Post, discovered by John Lockwood at the Library of Congress in Washington DC – a reminder that the 1920’s and 1930’s were warm. In fact, 1934 has overtaken 1998 as the warmest US year following a recent data correction, with 1921 coming third.

The global cooling of the 1940’s to 1970’s prompted The Cooling World article in Newsweek on 28th April 1975. This all goes to illustrate how lightweight some sections of the media are. The post 1970’s warming is now well established and the media are much more climate aware, so similar scary headlines are now a weekly occurrance, with the Arctic sea ice featuring prominently. However, the Arctic situation represents regional change, rather than global – there is no equivalent loss of sea ice in the Antarctic. Dust, black carbon, aerosols and Ozone are being implicated in Arctic warming, in addition to greenhouse gases.

Parliamentary legislatures around the world, diverse though they are, generally all share a committee system of review. The review process usually consists of either ad hoc or standing committees that are convened to discuss particular issues or draft pieces of legislation.

Thus in the United States, until recently, members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works under the chairmanship of Senator Inhofe – ignoring political blandishments and distorted science alike – have trail-blazed a path of sensible and moderate commentary on the vexed issue of dangerous human-caused climate change.

Similarly, in the United Kingdom, in 2005 the powerful Select Committee on Economic Affairs of the House of Lords conducted an investigation into the economics of climate change, concluding that “the scientific context (of climate change) is one of uncertainty” and that IPCC procedure “strikes us as opening the way for climate science and economics to be determined, at least in part, by political requirements rather than by the evidence. Sound science cannot emerge from an unsound process

Now a third parliament has chimed in, this time in the Australian lower house. There, a committee under the leadership of government MP Petro Georgiou was asked to advise the Howard government regarding the feasibility and costs of sequestration of carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. In a politically bizarre development, Mr Georgiou – whose view is that “there is now compelling evidence that human activity is changing the global climate”, and who insisted on making clear reference to this view in his sequestration report – needed the support of the Labor party opposition members of the committee in order to produce a majority report. And four of Mr Georgiou’s government colleagues, led by Dr Dennis Jensen, issued a separate minority report which provides a restrained, rational and sensible discussion of the climate change issue.

Dr Dennis Jensen is that rare animal, a politician who is both a PhD-trained scientist and an experienced researcher. Dr Jensen, who represents a West Australian seat in the Canberra Senate, has worked for two of Australia’s premier research organizations, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Organisation (CSIRO) and the Defence Science and Technology Organization (DSTO).

His minority report points out that the widely promulgated and alarmist British Stern Report has been “thoroughly debunked”, and that “most of the public statements that promote the dangerous human warming scare are made from a position of ignorance – by political leaders, press commentators and celebrities who share the characteristics of lack of scientific training and lack of an ability to differentiate between sound science and computer-based scare mongering”.

With delicious irony, such a diagnosis encapsulates exactly the astonishing and fierce reaction that release of the minority report provoked from the majority members of the committee, other politicians and the press. Chairman Georgiou averred that Jensen was wrong because 43 out of the 46 submissions that the committee had received said so, apparently being unaware that matters of science are not decided by unrepresentative and unqualified consensus. Deputy Chairman Harry Quick badged Jensen’s report as “philosophical waffle”. Labor’s environment spokesman, former rock musician Peter Garrett, wondered out loud in parliament “What planet are these government MPs on?”, and Greens senator Christine Milne called Dr Jensen “a dinosaur”. Finally, The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper referred to the group of four dissentient MPs as the “Flat Earth Four”, and their reporter described one of them, Danna Vale, as simply “daffy”.

What’s remarkable about that, I hear you thinking? Politics is politics. Well, yes it is, and so is science. Dennis Jensen’s minority report contains a careful and accurate assessment of the science relevant to the global warming issue, and advances logical argument and facts in support of the view that human-caused warming is not proven, nor likely, to be dangerous. Yet not one other Australian politician, scientist or media reporter is prepared to discuss any of the science issues, let alone to try to show where Dr Jensen might have erred. Instead, en masse, the commentariat have scorned and abused him for daring to challenge the mighty shibboleth of human-caused global warming.

Of course, Prime Minister Howard – whose government is well behind in the opinion polls and who faces an election in the next few months – is in a politically exposed position regarding climate policy. Recent informal polls suggest that as many as 75% of Australian voters remain unconvinced of the danger of human-caused warming. Nonetheless, with strong bias the media continue to promulgate the shrill climate alarmism of extreme groups like the IPCC, NGOs such as the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Australian Conservation Foundation, and the Labor and Green political parties, and this has forced the Liberal government to make an in principle commitment to the future introduction of a carbon trading system.

It surprised no-one, therefore, that Mr Howard’s comment on the Jensen minority report was “No, I don’t agree with their views”. Pragmatism, after all, is what wins most elections.

The reality is, however, that over the last few years, the legislatures of the U.S., U.K. and now Australia – all, incidentally, nations with strong scientific credentials – have given independent assessments of the in-vogue claims of climate change disaster, and each has found them wanting.

The Jensen group’s third review, launched in Australia this week, closely follows several other sensational revelations that undermine even further the already very weak case for dangerous human-caused global warming.

First, that bastion of warming alarmism the British Hadley Centre has finally faced reality by publishing a computer model which acknowledges that warming has not occurred since 1998 (and conveniently threatens “but just you wait until 2014”!). Having ignored natural climate variability for 15 years, the modelers now take it into account and discover – guess what – that climate varies.

Second, earlier British research which suggested that the late 20th century warming of the ground temperature record was not due to urban heat island effects was found to be unrepeatable, and therefore must be discarded. This calls into question the accuracy and usefulness of all thermometer-based surface temperature data.

Third, NASA acknowledged that since 2000 its much-reproduced US temperature record has been inaccurate because of a computer programming error. After appropriate corrections, it turns out that 1934, not 1998, was the hottest year of the century in the US, and that only four of the hottest ten years on record occurred around the turn of the 21st century.

Finally, and fourth, an in-progess audit of the quality of the Global Climate Network of weather stations maintained by NOAA is showing that many stations are sited in unsatisfactory locations. This revelation shows, once again, that the ground-based thermometer stations provide unreliable data. Perhaps even more serious, it shows that major government and international climate agencies have been, at best, asleep on the job

The wise men and women of our three houses of parliament may mostly be professional politicians, but nonetheless they have discerned correctly the non-alarmist nature of contemporary climate change. The world has many more pressing problems to deal with than quixotically reducing carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere in order to feel good. The global warming scare campaign needs to be recognized as such, badged as such, and then disregarded as such – and in short order.

Bob Carter