> It welcomes research papers broadly related to interactions between living matter and temperature. The journal's logo is "Temperature is life." While the primary focus is on the medical physiology of body temperature regulation, research in all scientific disciplines and at all levels of organization - from submolecular to biospheric - is of interest to the journal. If your paper deals with both temperature and life, it belongs in Temperature!
Nitpick: it’s not really a paper, but an editorial.
Also, it’s two papers: a model for solar activity, plus predictions for what that will mean for temperatures on earth.
Both fit within the very broad scope of this journal. https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=a...: “The journal's logo is "Temperature is life." While the primary focus is on the medical physiology of body temperature regulation, research in all scientific disciplines and at all levels of organization - from submolecular to biospheric - is of interest to the journal. If your paper deals with both temperature and life, it belongs in Temperature!”
But yes, I think the first part would be more believable if it appeared in a journal more focused on the sun.
So in the worst case, temperatures would drop back to what? The fifties? I can live with that, I think.
But is there more to this than just temperatures? Is solar radiance important for other factors as well (besides the obvious like crops and solar power)?
No, even if the paper's results can be accepted without qualifications. (I think they need huge qualifications.)
This effect might at best delay climate effects and we are going to see more extreme climate effects after that period due to the inaction allowed by this pause.
I wouldn't count on it. The article presents two minimums in the 21st century, separated by a short revert to normal. It seems that's all we get - the next series of solar minima is gonna be in the 24th century. So we have 33 years to recover CO2 and fix some other environmental messes: there are plenty that can ruin human civilization by themselves.
It doesn't matter much at best case, because even if the conclusion is correct, there's always a maximum of activity after a minimum. Which means that it'll amplify the anthropogenic CC...
At worst case, if the conclusion is indeed correct, I'd expect that nobody will do anything to counteract the ACC a few decades more which is a nice recipe for a real disaster we'll throw on our children.
"Climate experts believe the next ice age is on its way." - Leonard Nimoy in a very funny 1978 documentary
Ah, global cooling - the conveniently forgotten scientific consensus. Well, at least they only had to screw up once more with "global warming" before finally settling on the ambiguous "climate change".
And as global warming doesn't do what it's supposed to (again) in the coming decade, they can blame it on everything from the pandemic to the grand solar minimum (maybe they'll get lucky and there will be a big volcanic event that will buy them another decade of excuses). If you're wrong, repeatedly, just keep changing the game forever.
Meanwhile elites like Barack Obama will keep loading up on millions of dollars of coastal real-estate, because obviously the great climate change floods are coming soon.
I was alive then, and it was never a scientific consensus. Global warming already had strong advocates back then, because it was well-known that CO2 was a greenhouse gas, and that CO2 emissions were increasing.
Sarcasm failed to translate, "scientific consensus" is a goofy euphemism for a messaging campaign that has nothing to do with science. You are completely right about the disagreement between scientists at the time, with many pointing out the fact that we couldn't accurately predict these changes - so we had absolutely no hope of attributing cause to effect until that changed. Still good advice.
We have less to worry from global cooling than from global warming. Human civilization would be mainly affected by decreased food production, which can probably be offset by increasing production with novel farming techniques like vertical farms. Global population growth topping out the coming mid-century will also help. If nothing helps, it is strll way easier to introduce CO2 and buddies into the athmosphere than removing them. That would leave the generations after the task of recovery, but that should become feasible if a significant part of energy production is done with solar energy.
> A persistent argument designed to discredit the field of climate science is that scientists predicted an ice age in the 1970s. So popular in fact that it ranks an impressive #7 in the most cited skeptic arguments. The logic goes that climate scientists got it completely wrong predicting global cooling in the 1970s (it started warming instead). Hence climate science can't be trusted about current global warming predictions. Setting aside the logical flaws of such an ad hominem argument, was there any consensus among 70s climate scientists predicting global cooling?
They cite a paper which looked at the publications during that era, and describe the conclusion as:
>The paper surveys climate studies from 1965 to 1979 (and in a refreshing change to other similar surveys, lists all the papers). They find very few papers (7 in total) predict global cooling. This isn't surprising. What surprises is that even in the 1970s, on the back of 3 decades of cooling, more papers (42 in total) predict global warming due to CO2 than cooling.
Hardly a consensus.
And ... Leonard Nimoy, in 1978? What documentary was this, "In Search of..."?
FWIW, Nimoy was never a scientist, so how is that at all relevant?
> There was no scientific consensus in favor of global cooling.
Define "scientific consensus", and then step back and ask yourself why anyone would elect to corrupt the scientific process with something so easily gamed. I already hear the cries of "bbbut meta analysis, science is hard!" It has nothing to do with science, it is a political phrase.
> Hardly a consensus.
Oddly missing from that are all the scientists calling both parties out for being unable to accurately predict anything, which is a pretty good sign of inaccurate attribution within the models.
> What documentary was this, "In Search of..."?
Unless he did more than one, yes. Also, enjoy the Youtube editorial flag assuring you of the opposite - because this is about science.
> FWIW, Nimoy was never a scientist, so how is that at all relevant?
Because scientists aren't playing much of a role in the messaging campaign calling for extra-national economic management.
If you don't like the term, why did you use it in the first place?
> Oddly missing from that
What does the "that" refer to?
I refer to all papers published in what is generally described as scientific journals during the late 1960s and the 1970s. Since that appeared to be what you were talking about.
> Unless he did more than one, yes
"In Search of..." started with "This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture. The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine."
This is the same series that asked if plants respond to people's thoughts, explored the idea that the Nazca Lines landing instructions for UFOs, and searched for several forms of cryptozoology.
That's a show you want as the foundations for your beliefs?
You were gamed by a TV show designed to get viewers by pushing some wacky ideas.
> If you don't like the term, why did you use it in the first place?
I do like it, I like it a lot - it perfectly represents the manipulative nature of the situation.
"...both scientific consensus and political will have come a long way." -- VP Al Gore, Kyoto Climate Change Conference 1997
> What does the "that" refer to?
The false dichotomy you seem so interested in pursuing. The ratio of cooling to warming papers doesn't mean anything when neither deliver accurate models.
> You were gamed by a TV show designed to get viewers by pushing some wacky ideas.
I wonder if you are so obtuse that you believe that to be an accurate estimate of my position, or even a clever dig. It just makes you look desperate to avoid the fact that science plays little role in what has become an ad-campaign/power-grab.
When I publish it's often as a single author, that's because I work on the things that I am allowed to publish on my spare time. Very little of my day to day is suited to publication. So - when I see other single author papers I assume that they are also hobbyists.
She's a professor in Maths at Northumbria: https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff/z/professor..., with a PhD in astrophysics. Recent publications on the same topic in what appear to be good journals (latest in Astrophysical Journal Letters, which has an h of 129).
That is not the same topic. That APJL paper is on
space plasmas, while the argument presented here has far more to do with magnetic fields. Her last paper on the same topic was in fact retracted a year ago (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32132618/) but still appears on her 'key papers' list for some reason.
TL;DR: Author draws parallels to historic episode with similar initial conditions and concludes we will see the same cooling effects. However in whether that historic cooling effect was just because solar irradiation changes (rather than that there also was volcanic activity) is disputed.
"This global cooling during the upcoming grand solar minimum 1 (2020–2053) can offset for three decades any signs of global warming and would require inter-government efforts to tackle problems with heat and food supplies for the whole population of the Earth"
This is quite a conclusion.
Who is the author?
Are the affiliated with a university?
Did they get funding for this research?
Is the journal credible?
They call this an editorial and use the first person so I guess this isn't a research paper
It's interesting reading about this on Wikipedia[1].
"The first known frost fair on the River Thames was in AD 695..."
" The frost fair of 1814 began on 1 February, and lasted four days... As the ice broke up starting on 5 February, several people drowned."
But apparently, a milder climate was not the only reason "Frost Fairs" were no longer possible:
"This was the last frost fair. The climate was growing milder; old London Bridge was demolished in 1831 and replaced with a new bridge with wider arches, allowing the tide to flow more freely; and the river was embanked in stages during the 19th century, all of which made the river less likely to freeze. There was nearly a frost fair in 1881. Andrews (1887) noted the severe winter of 1881, saying, "it was expected by many that a Frost Fair would once more be held on the Thames".
"When contacted by Retraction Watch for their post on this, Zharkova told them, “We consider this retraction by the Editor of Scientific Reports as a shameful step to cover up the truthful facts about the solar and Earth orbital motion reported by the retracted paper, in our replies to the reviewer comments, and in the further papers.”"
Some comments from the linked article: "other solar scientists have criticized the model as being too simple, created based on just 35 years of data, and failing to accurately reproduce past solar activity."
"the model fails in reproducing past known solar activity because Zharkova’s team treats the sun as a simple, predictable system like a pendulum."
"Zharkova disagrees – I contacted her, and she told me that she believes a grand solar minimum would have a much bigger cooling effect. However, she also referenced long-debunked myths about global warming on Mars and Jupiter, and made a comment about “the preachers of global warming.”"
"But Zharkova’s climate science beliefs are irrelevant. While she has created a model predicting an imminent period of quiet solar activity, other scientists have identified serious flaws in the model, and in any case, research has shown that another solar minimum would only have a small and temporary impact on Earth’s climate."
This is entirely off topic, but I tried to look up the accuracy of JPL's ephemeris of the sun (not because the conspiracy theorist needs a response, I was just curious). I haven't found that answer yet but, I found an incredible article that describes a 1959 experiment that pointed a 40 kW radar transmitter at the sun and detected the reflected echo. This was done at Stanford University (not Red Coast)
"On a number of mornings in September, 1958, April, 1959, and September, 1959, attempts were made at Stanford University to obtain radar echoes from the sun. The data have been intensively analyzed with the aid of an electronic digital computer. Results indicate that solar echoes were obtained on three mornings in April of 1959 and on two mornings in September of 1959."
I had no idea this was even possible; the sun is very RF-noisy.
Everytime I see someone claim they know what effect something will have on human caused climate change I think of this quote.
"This does not mean that I advocate inaction. For example, in the absence of understanding, it would be irresponsible to continue injecting large and rising amounts of greenhouse gases such as CO2 into the atmosphere. They should be reduced, of course, or at least not increased until we are reasonably sure that we know what we are doing." (Donald W. Braben, Scientific Freedom)
I wish everyone would consider that changing the fundamental makeup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere without any idea how we might reverse it is a pretty rash thing to do.
> Although, it is not clear yet if this trend in the terrestrial temperature and solar irradiance is caused directly by the increased solar activity itself or by some other factors of the solar-terrestrial interaction in the whole solar system and human activities.
Being a bit cynical about most things I think this could well be the worst possible news if it's true. Rather than giving us some breathing room to put climate change mitigations in place it'll likely lead to governments delaying doing anything. Humans are terrible at doing things to protect our long term interests. Taking the imperative away will lead to complacency. In 2053 when the solar warming cycle starts again things will be much, much worse.
> ...it'll likely lead to governments delaying doing anything.
You have a much higher opinion of the world's governments than I do. They seem very eager to establish extra-national governance, and climate change has provided the perfect vehicle for exactly that - a justification for global economic management. I seriously doubt that truth would ever get in the way of that, so buck up - you'll get what you think you want :)
There are lot of blind spots in this single author paper:
- Author does PCA to build a model however there is no data on fitness of the model. Specifically, what is the variance? Without this information it is irresponsible to make prediction to the year.
- According to Wikipedia, it is highly controversial to associate Maunder Minimum to "little ice age". Author provides no details/limitations on this.
Overall, it looks like more investogation needed. It would be hard to take this paper at its face value.
If this turns out to be true, the worry is not about the temperature decrease, that's just returning to normal. I'd worry about what having flown blind into a major temperature decrease event would spell for climate efforts. I mean, it would just provide fuel for man-made climate change skeptics. And if that leads to a rollback of CO2 reduction efforts, the climate whiplash in a few decades is going to be brutal.
On the other hand, it may give us some space to develop the needed technologies and get our act together.
Mmm... but since it’s not true, or at least, highly criticised for lacking detail and consideration of data that doesn’t directly support it own hypothesis... not really.
Given the immense complexity of the systems that ultimately result in one climate or other on earth, I don't find it impossible that the current trajectory towards a warmer general climate could be broken by some thing or other, to everyone's surprise.
An amateur has however absolutely no way of assessing claims like these, and until there is a fair number of papers pointing to the same conclusion, I won't attach too much importance to a single paper, by a researcher that already has had another paper in the same realm retracted. [0]
This is absolute garbage and I find it extremely worrying that it made it on to the front page of hacker news. Either someone pumped it, or the discernment of the readership has really gone down hill.
47 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] thread> It welcomes research papers broadly related to interactions between living matter and temperature. The journal's logo is "Temperature is life." While the primary focus is on the medical physiology of body temperature regulation, research in all scientific disciplines and at all levels of organization - from submolecular to biospheric - is of interest to the journal. If your paper deals with both temperature and life, it belongs in Temperature!
Also, it’s two papers: a model for solar activity, plus predictions for what that will mean for temperatures on earth.
Both fit within the very broad scope of this journal. https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=a...: “The journal's logo is "Temperature is life." While the primary focus is on the medical physiology of body temperature regulation, research in all scientific disciplines and at all levels of organization - from submolecular to biospheric - is of interest to the journal. If your paper deals with both temperature and life, it belongs in Temperature!”
But yes, I think the first part would be more believable if it appeared in a journal more focused on the sun.
But is there more to this than just temperatures? Is solar radiance important for other factors as well (besides the obvious like crops and solar power)?
This effect might at best delay climate effects and we are going to see more extreme climate effects after that period due to the inaction allowed by this pause.
Ah, global cooling - the conveniently forgotten scientific consensus. Well, at least they only had to screw up once more with "global warming" before finally settling on the ambiguous "climate change".
Meanwhile elites like Barack Obama will keep loading up on millions of dollars of coastal real-estate, because obviously the great climate change floods are coming soon.
There was no scientific consensus in favor of global cooling.
Quoting https://skepticalscience.com/What-1970s-science-said-about-g...
> A persistent argument designed to discredit the field of climate science is that scientists predicted an ice age in the 1970s. So popular in fact that it ranks an impressive #7 in the most cited skeptic arguments. The logic goes that climate scientists got it completely wrong predicting global cooling in the 1970s (it started warming instead). Hence climate science can't be trusted about current global warming predictions. Setting aside the logical flaws of such an ad hominem argument, was there any consensus among 70s climate scientists predicting global cooling?
They cite a paper which looked at the publications during that era, and describe the conclusion as:
>The paper surveys climate studies from 1965 to 1979 (and in a refreshing change to other similar surveys, lists all the papers). They find very few papers (7 in total) predict global cooling. This isn't surprising. What surprises is that even in the 1970s, on the back of 3 decades of cooling, more papers (42 in total) predict global warming due to CO2 than cooling.
Hardly a consensus.
And ... Leonard Nimoy, in 1978? What documentary was this, "In Search of..."?
FWIW, Nimoy was never a scientist, so how is that at all relevant?
Define "scientific consensus", and then step back and ask yourself why anyone would elect to corrupt the scientific process with something so easily gamed. I already hear the cries of "bbbut meta analysis, science is hard!" It has nothing to do with science, it is a political phrase.
> Hardly a consensus.
Oddly missing from that are all the scientists calling both parties out for being unable to accurately predict anything, which is a pretty good sign of inaccurate attribution within the models.
> What documentary was this, "In Search of..."?
Unless he did more than one, yes. Also, enjoy the Youtube editorial flag assuring you of the opposite - because this is about science.
> FWIW, Nimoy was never a scientist, so how is that at all relevant?
Because scientists aren't playing much of a role in the messaging campaign calling for extra-national economic management.
If you don't like the term, why did you use it in the first place?
> Oddly missing from that
What does the "that" refer to?
I refer to all papers published in what is generally described as scientific journals during the late 1960s and the 1970s. Since that appeared to be what you were talking about.
> Unless he did more than one, yes
"In Search of..." started with "This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture. The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine."
This is the same series that asked if plants respond to people's thoughts, explored the idea that the Nazca Lines landing instructions for UFOs, and searched for several forms of cryptozoology.
That's a show you want as the foundations for your beliefs?
You were gamed by a TV show designed to get viewers by pushing some wacky ideas.
I do like it, I like it a lot - it perfectly represents the manipulative nature of the situation.
"...both scientific consensus and political will have come a long way." -- VP Al Gore, Kyoto Climate Change Conference 1997
> What does the "that" refer to?
The false dichotomy you seem so interested in pursuing. The ratio of cooling to warming papers doesn't mean anything when neither deliver accurate models.
> You were gamed by a TV show designed to get viewers by pushing some wacky ideas.
I wonder if you are so obtuse that you believe that to be an accurate estimate of my position, or even a clever dig. It just makes you look desperate to avoid the fact that science plays little role in what has become an ad-campaign/power-grab.
> Ah, global cooling - the conveniently forgotten scientific consensus
you said it thinking it is essentially meaningless.
Obviously everything that you and I have written can be viewed through the same lens of manipulation.
There is therefore no point in continuing. I'll leave with a pointer to Asimov, who was writing about global warming since at least the early 1970 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6tSYRY90PA&feature=youtu.be .
https://retractionwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Valen...
https://www.iflscience.com/environment/mini-ice-age-hoopla-g... gives some other criticisms of the paper.
TL;DR: Author draws parallels to historic episode with similar initial conditions and concludes we will see the same cooling effects. However in whether that historic cooling effect was just because solar irradiation changes (rather than that there also was volcanic activity) is disputed.
This is quite a conclusion. Who is the author?
Are the affiliated with a university?
Did they get funding for this research?
Is the journal credible?
They call this an editorial and use the first person so I guess this isn't a research paper
IFL has pop-sci piece that explains some criticisms of this paper https://www.iflscience.com/environment/mini-ice-age-hoopla-g... .
We're made for it, with cosy stone cottages, fireplaces and pubs, all built in colder times. Hot summers just feel wrong to me here.
Apparantly, during the Maunder minimum mentioned in this paper, they used to have winter markets on the Thames in London - frozen solid.
"The first known frost fair on the River Thames was in AD 695..."
" The frost fair of 1814 began on 1 February, and lasted four days... As the ice broke up starting on 5 February, several people drowned."
But apparently, a milder climate was not the only reason "Frost Fairs" were no longer possible:
"This was the last frost fair. The climate was growing milder; old London Bridge was demolished in 1831 and replaced with a new bridge with wider arches, allowing the tide to flow more freely; and the river was embanked in stages during the 19th century, all of which made the river less likely to freeze. There was nearly a frost fair in 1881. Andrews (1887) noted the severe winter of 1881, saying, "it was expected by many that a Frost Fair would once more be held on the Thames".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Thames_frost_fairs#The_f...
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/paper-that-claimed-t...
Choice excerpt:
"When contacted by Retraction Watch for their post on this, Zharkova told them, “We consider this retraction by the Editor of Scientific Reports as a shameful step to cover up the truthful facts about the solar and Earth orbital motion reported by the retracted paper, in our replies to the reviewer comments, and in the further papers.”"
As far as I can see from this, Valentina Zharkova's paper is basically a joke, technically.
Notice that Zharkova made headlines previously by claiming that Earth is headed for a mini ice age: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...
Some comments from the linked article: "other solar scientists have criticized the model as being too simple, created based on just 35 years of data, and failing to accurately reproduce past solar activity."
"the model fails in reproducing past known solar activity because Zharkova’s team treats the sun as a simple, predictable system like a pendulum."
"Zharkova disagrees – I contacted her, and she told me that she believes a grand solar minimum would have a much bigger cooling effect. However, she also referenced long-debunked myths about global warming on Mars and Jupiter, and made a comment about “the preachers of global warming.”"
"But Zharkova’s climate science beliefs are irrelevant. While she has created a model predicting an imminent period of quiet solar activity, other scientists have identified serious flaws in the model, and in any case, research has shown that another solar minimum would only have a small and temporary impact on Earth’s climate."
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/243867.pdf
"On a number of mornings in September, 1958, April, 1959, and September, 1959, attempts were made at Stanford University to obtain radar echoes from the sun. The data have been intensively analyzed with the aid of an electronic digital computer. Results indicate that solar echoes were obtained on three mornings in April of 1959 and on two mornings in September of 1959."
I had no idea this was even possible; the sun is very RF-noisy.
"This does not mean that I advocate inaction. For example, in the absence of understanding, it would be irresponsible to continue injecting large and rising amounts of greenhouse gases such as CO2 into the atmosphere. They should be reduced, of course, or at least not increased until we are reasonably sure that we know what we are doing." (Donald W. Braben, Scientific Freedom)
I wish everyone would consider that changing the fundamental makeup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere without any idea how we might reverse it is a pretty rash thing to do.
> Although, it is not clear yet if this trend in the terrestrial temperature and solar irradiance is caused directly by the increased solar activity itself or by some other factors of the solar-terrestrial interaction in the whole solar system and human activities.
Some days I'm very glad I chose not to have kids.
You have a much higher opinion of the world's governments than I do. They seem very eager to establish extra-national governance, and climate change has provided the perfect vehicle for exactly that - a justification for global economic management. I seriously doubt that truth would ever get in the way of that, so buck up - you'll get what you think you want :)
- Author does PCA to build a model however there is no data on fitness of the model. Specifically, what is the variance? Without this information it is irresponsible to make prediction to the year.
- According to Wikipedia, it is highly controversial to associate Maunder Minimum to "little ice age". Author provides no details/limitations on this.
Overall, it looks like more investogation needed. It would be hard to take this paper at its face value.
On the other hand, it may give us some space to develop the needed technologies and get our act together.
An amateur has however absolutely no way of assessing claims like these, and until there is a fair number of papers pointing to the same conclusion, I won't attach too much importance to a single paper, by a researcher that already has had another paper in the same realm retracted. [0]
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-61020-3