Global Warming's Astronomical Origins

Last week [originally posted April 29, 2009], former Vice President and Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore testified in Congress to encourage massive "cap and trade" regulation by which the government would effectively seize state control of the nation's economy.

Having been previously stung by snowstorms and freezing cold snaps whenever Al Gore speaks, the Congressional hearings were scheduled in late April and avoided a dramatic rebuttal by Mother Nature. However, the Earth's cooling that began in 1998 continues to challenge the global warming theory.

The founder of the Weather Channel, John Coleman, is working with 30,000 scientists who oppose the idea that global warming is caused by man's activities. Coleman plans to sue Al Gore for fraud to finally get some forum in which to debate the theory.

In January, Japan's prestigious Society of Energy and Resources gave an "astonishing rebuke" to scientists promoting the idea of man-made global warming. JSER, a government advisory board, compared global warming theories to "ancient astrology." JSER noted that the Earth stopped warming in 2001 (other say 1998), but in general the Earth has merely been recovering naturally from the "Little Ice Age" that occurred between around 1400 and 1800.

The Japanese scientists criticized over-reliance on inherently-unreliable computer models, without real-world testing of the hypothesis. JSER concluded that cycles in the sun's activities cause variation in the Earth's climate: "Through the 11 year sunspot cycle, ultraviolet rays vary considerably, the ionosphere and ozone layerare affected."

Poland's Academy of Sciences recently published a document that rejects man-made global warming, also known as Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). The Polish Academy notes that over the history of the Earth, atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased an average of 800 years AFTER warmer temperatures. This data decisively proves that carbon dioxide does not cause global warming. Global warming comes first. Then carbon dioxide increased later. (Most likely dissolved CO2 evaporated from warming oceans.)

The Academy also noted that global temperatures have been higher than today in Earth's past. And the Academy explained that temperature monitoring of the Earth is very spotty, starting only 200 years ago. Even today only 28% of the world is represented by temperature monitoring, and far less of the Earth was measured as we look back through older, historical records. Measurement of the vast oceans is only about 40 years old.The Academy pointed out that urban growth has encroached upon and surrounded the weather stations that were previously in the countryside. Today's measurements from those stations are hotter because of the heat effect of asphalt and concrete of the cities, while readings from those same stations thirty years ago were then in thecountryside. Therefore, we are measuring not increased global temperatures, but the "heat effect" of the concrete jungle expanding to surround the weather stations.

In one case, a U.S. investigator for the website "Watts Up with That" discovered that a weather station at an airport was catching the hot jet exhaust from jet airplanes onthe runway! (Meanwhile, note that Russians and East Europeans are often far-superior theoretical scientists to those in the West, sometimes holding multiple Ph.D's. Their economy manufactured junk due to political interference in the marketplace. But their scientists have traditionally been better-educated.)

Now, recent scientific analysis is coming out of hiding that precisely identifies the strongest driving factors in the Earth's climate: It is the sun. The sun goes through a number of powerful cycles. The sun's 11-year sunspot cycle is fairly well known. However, the sun also goes through much longer cycles as well, including oneof approximately 180 years, and one of approximately 1,000 years.

As a result of these cycles, the sun in 2004 was measured as being the hottest it has been in 1,000 years. However, measurements can be difficult because the sun emits energy across a broad spectrum, including in the charged particles known as the solar wind, not only in visible light. Energy can be transferred through the solar wind alone. There are conflicting opinions about the sun's energy output varying.

Cycles in the sun's energy output are apparently linked to the movements of the solar system. Russia's Pravda reports that "Most of the long-term climate data collected from various sources also shows a strong correlation with the three astronomical cycles which are together known as the Milankovich cycles."

We learn in school only a simple, approximation of the complexities of the sun and the solar system. Actually, the sun wobbles around a point representing the center of mass of the solar system. The sun does not stay still, but circles an invisible spot.

This is like two children holding hands and whirling around. They "orbit" an imaginary spot between them. In the same way, the planets do not technically orbit around the sun, but the sun and the planets orbit around each other like the two children holding hands. Because the sun is unimaginably massive compared to the planets, the gravitational center of the solar system is close to the sun's center. But not precisely there.

As a result, the sun circles and orbits the solar system's center of gravity. This causes the sun to move in a circle on a complex cycle of 178 years, with oscillations every 11 years and every 70 years. In fact, this is the technique which astronomers are using to detect planets around distant stars. They observe a star wobbling (or partly eclipsed when a planet crosses in front of it), and conclude that there is a large planet circling it.

However, the sun is not solid. It is gas compressed by gravity to the point of acting like a liquid (plasma). So just like taking a bowl of water and swirling it around, the sun's motion causes movement in the liquid substance of the sun. Because the sun is orbiting the solar system's center of gravity, this motion creates waves, oscillations, and disturbance in the sun's plasma. The sun's orbit creates torque (spinning forces) that are different throughout the cycles of the planets' motions around the sun.

The astronomical cycles involved match the cycles in the sun's activity. There is a 178 year cycle in sunspot activity which matches the sun's complex orbit around the system center of mass every 178 years. The effect changes because the various planets are circling at different times. Every now and then, when Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune -- the heaviest planets -- are on the same side of the solar system, they swing the sun differently than when they are scattered about the solar system.

The orbital torque of the sun changes during this 178 year cycle, which affects the pressures and conditions in the sun's core. Although the effect is tiny compared to the overall power of the sun, it is enough to cause slight increases and decreases in the energy output and activity of the sun.

The biggest planets line up on the same side of the solar system at various times. Jupiter orbits the sun every 11.8 years, very similar to the 11 year sunspot cycle. Saturn orbits every 29.5 years, Uranus circles every 84 years, and Neptune in 165 years.

Pioneering work was performed by Dr Theodor Landscheidt, in papers like "Swinging Sun, 79-Year Cycle and Climatic Change" and "Solar Rotation, Impulses of the Torque in the Sun's Motion, and Climactic Variation." Dr. Landscheidt's work -- overwhelmingly ignored -- predicted the current minimum in the sun's activity that is currently puzzling the world's scientists.

The BBC, like many news outlets, reported last week: "'Quiet Sun' baffling astronomers: The Sun is the dimmest it has been for nearly a century." This very-recent downturn in solar activity may be the reason that the Earth stopped cooling in 1998. What is being called the "Landscheidt Minimum" might produce an unusually-quiet sun for as long as 70 years (not an absence of sunspots, but fewer than usual). If the sun-drives-climate theorists are right, this could produce a significant cooling of the Earth reminiscent of the "Little Ice Age" from 1400 to 1800, or perhaps only the slight cooling experienced from 1945 to 1970.

Cyclical changes affect the activity of the sun, including the magnetic field (which affects the temperature on Earth), sunspot activity (related to the magnetic field), and energy output. The most visible evidence of these cycles is the change in the number of sunspots.

The 11-year sunspot cycle is caused by dramatic changes in the sun's immensely powerful magnetic field. Just as the Earth's molten-iron core generates a weak magnetic field, that makes a compass work, the sun's boiling mass of electrically-charged particles generates a magnetic field of incomprehensible power. Not only is the strength of the sun's magnetic field staggering, but the sun is a liquid ball -- actually plasma made of compressed gases at high pressure. The boiling motion of this plasma creates an irregular, extremely complex, and constantly-changing magnetic field.

In fact, the sun's magnetic field actually reverses every 22 years! Magnetic North becomes South and vice versa. The sunspot minimums every 11 years occur at the point of reversal. Sunspots are created when irregularities in the magnetic field pull the sun's plasma downward. Heat moving to the surface is restrained, so the surfacebecomes cooler than the surrounding sun (though still very hot).

The presence of sunspots indicates a boiling, active sun -- primarily in a turbulent magnetic field. The same irregularities in the magnetic field can also push plasma upward, creating gigantic solar flares leaping toward space above the sun, and coronal mass ejections -- enormous "burps" of the sun's matter spit out into space.

The absence of sunspots indicates a less-energetic sun, particularly in terms of its magnetic field.

Changes in the sun's magnetic field can affect the Earth in many ways. Bombardment of the Earth by solar wind (high-energy charged particles spit out of the sun) is an additional mode of energy transfer from the sun to the Earth, and one which varies substantially during the sunspot cycle.

Similarly, a new theory pioneered by Dr.Svensmark has found that when the sun's magnetic field is strong, it shields the Earth from cosmic rays -- charged particles from outside the solar system. When the magnetic field is weaker (especially when it is reversing) more cosmic rays get through. These cosmic rays stimulate cloud formation in the Earth's atmosphere,changing the Earth's temperature.