The chart at right clearly shows a weakening trend of sunspots in solar cycles 22, 23 and 24. These are the latest in a sequence dating from 1755, when extensive recording of solar sunspot activity began. Note that the peak of solar cycle 24, which occurred in 2014, is only about half that of solar cycle 22, which peaked about 1989.
This portends global cooling—not global warming. Sunspots are dwindling to lows not seen in 200 years. In 2008, during the solar minimum of cycle 23, there were 266 days with no sunspots. This is considered a very deep solar minimum. You can check out pictures of sunspots—or their absence—day after day for recent years at http://tinyurl.com/6zck4x.
At right is a recent picture of the sun with a single sunspot region as the sun marches toward a cyclical low expected in 2019 or 2020. Sunspots have been observed for millennia, first in China and with a telescope for the first time by Galileo in 1610.
We now have a 400-year record of sunspot cycle observations, from which we can see a cycle length of about 11 years. Combining this fact with the discovery of a strong correlation between solar activity and radioactive carbon 14 in tree rings, it has been possible to backdate sunspot cycles from the sun’s magnetic cycles for a thousand years, back to the Oort Minimum in the year 1010.
Sunspots occur when magnetic fields rip through the sun’s surface, producing holes in the sun’s corona, solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and changes in the solar wind, the stream of charged particles emanating from the sun. The solar wind, by modulating the galactic cosmic rays which reach the earth, determines both the formation of clouds and the carbon dioxide level in the earth’s atmosphere—which has nothing to do with emissions from factories or automobiles!
This is why in the 15 years prior to 2013, when humans produced 461 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide—compared to only 302 billion tonnes in the preceding 15 years—there was no global warming; in fact, the earth actually cooled despite the massive increase in carbon dioxide emissions. The fear mongers claim a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide will produce catastrophic global warming. But Reid Bryson, founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Wisconsin, has stated, “You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as a doubling of carbon dioxide.”
After about 210 years, sunspot cycles “crash” or almost entirely die out, and the earth can cool dramatically. These unusually cold periods last several decades. Of greatest concern to us is the Maunder Minimum, which ran from 1645 to 1715. Below is a chart that shows the paucity of sunspots during this time. Some years had no sunspots at all.
The astronomer Sporer reported only 50 sunspots during a 30-year period, compared to 40,000 to 50,000 typical for that length of time.
Since the Maunder Minimum, a less extreme but still significantly below-average period of cooler temperatures occurred during the Dalton Minimum (1790 to 1830), also shown on the graph.
At least as far back as 2007—before Cycle 23 had bottomed—a Russian solar physicist, predicted what we are seeing now. Professor Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory in Russia, noting that solar irradiance had already begun to fall, said a slow decline in temperatures would begin as early as 2012-2015 and lead to a deep freeze in 2050-2060 that will last about fifty years. He said the warming we’ve been witnessing was caused by increased solar irradiance, not CO2 emissions:
It is no secret that increased solar irradiance warms Earth’s oceans, which then triggers the emission of large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (italics added.) So the common view that man’s industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations.
Further, debunking the very notion of a greenhouse effect, the renowned scientist said:
Ascribing ‘greenhouse’ effect properties to the Earth’s atmosphere is not scientifically substantiated. Heated greenhouse gases, which become lighter as a result of expansion, ascend to the atmosphere only to give the absorbed heat away.
In a paper published in 2009, Abdussamatov wrote that there have been 18 Maunder-type minima of deep temperature drops in the last 7,500 years, “which without fail follow after natural warming.” And, correspondingly,
while in the periods of high sunspot maxima, there have been periods of global warming. Such changes in the climate of the Earth could be caused only by lasting and significant changes in the Sun, because there was absolutely no industrial effect on nature in those times.
We would expect the onset of the phase of deep minimum in the present 200-year cycle of cyclic activity of the Sun to occur at the beginning of solar cycle 27; i.e., tentatively in the year 2042 plus or minus 11 years, and potentially lasting 45-65 years.
Regarding analyses of ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica, Abdussamatov wrote:
It has been seen that substantial increases in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and global climate warming have occurred cyclically, even when there was as yet no industrial action on nature. It has also been established that periodic, very substantial increases in the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere for a period of 420 thousand years never preceded warming, but, on the contrary, always followed an increase in the temperature with a delay of 200-800 years, i.e., they were its consequence (italics and boldface added.)
In an update in October 2013, Abdussamatov warned, “We are now on an unavoidable advance towards a deep temperature drop.”
