I highly recommend reading “Dark Winter, by John L. Casey. According to John L. Casey, global warming is over and has already peaked between 1998 and 2007. The good news is that it wasn’t the fault of humans, it was the fault of the Sun. The bad news is that global warming has already been replaced by a 3 decade cooling trend due to a “Solar Hibernation”, and this cooling trend will not be as pleasant as the warming trend.
According to Casey, global climate trends are controlled by changing energy output from the Sun, not elevated greenhouse gas levels. The Sun’s output can be estimated by counting the sun spots. A high number of sun spots indicates high energy output while a low number of sun spots indicates low energy output. The sun spots themselves have a low energy output, but the sun spots are surrounded by an area of much higher than average energy, making sun spots an indication of high energy output.
Sun spots were first observed in 364 BC by Chinese astronomer Gan De, and by Greek astronomers in 300 BC. The Chinese started recording sun spot levels in 28 BC in their official records. (Wikipedia)
Sun spot levels are cyclical and predictable to one sigma. Sun spot lows are correlated with low earth temperatures with a confidence level in excess of 90%.
There are three sun spot cycles covered in this book, 11 year, 100 year and 206 year cycles. The 206 year cycle is the most emphasized in this book and has the highest repeatability and correlation with earth temperatures. The author evaluated sun spot data for the past 1200 years. Casey named the 206 year cycle the Bicentennial Cycle. He later discovered that the cycle had already been discovered by at least 2 other people separately, who named it the de Vries Cycle and the Suess Cycle.
Periods of low sun spot activity are called “solar minimums”. The solar minimums also have names. The previous one on the 206 year cycle is the Dalton Minimum, named for its’ discoverer, John Dalton, a physicist who is best known for formulating the atomic theory. (Note how often climate discoveries are made by non-climatologists) The Dalton Minimum occurred between 1793 and 1830. This is a period that was known for extremely cold winters, cooler than average summers, but with higher than average number of 90 degree days. The solar minimum is preceded by several years of high temperatures and low precipitation. High levels if volcanic activity and earthquakes are coincident with solar minimums, but no one knows why. The Sun has already entered the next solar minimum after the Dalton Minimum on the 206 year cycle. The temperatures in the next 3 decades should therefore be similar to the temperatures between 1793 and 1830.
Review of weather related events between 1793 and 1830:
1788-1789 France: This is the heat immediately preceding the solar minimum. There were two consecutive crop failures due to high heat and drought. Bread prices doubled in one month, which helped to start the French Revolution. Similarly, record heat in 2010 was followed by record cold in 2011.
1812-1813: This is the flip-side of the heat, the cold of the Dalton Minimum. Napoleon invaded Russia with an army of 600,000. 400,000 died, many from exposure to the cold. His defeat was at the low point of the Dalton Minimum. Similarly, if the peak heat is 2005, the peak cold should be 2031, 26 years later. In 2031, Canada may not be able to grow any grain in much of the prairie. New England and Upstate New York may also have extensive crop failures.
1811-1812: Earthquakes along the New Madrid Fault rock the Mississippi Valley. This was a series of three earthquakes with a force of 8.0 on the Richter scale with many aftershocks. Many geologists believe the New Madrid Fault is currently due for movement, according to the Discovery Channel.
1815: Mount Tambora erupts in Indonesia, the largest eruption in recorded history. This eruption was 300 times more powerful than Mount St. Helens 1980 and 10 times more powerful than Krakatau 1883. It affected the global weather for 2 or 3 years.
1816, “The Year Without A Summer”: This was caused by a combination of the Dalton Minimum and the Tambora eruption. The winter brought bitter cold to New England and as far south as Pennsylvania. In June there was snow from New England to Virginia. July 4, it snowed again from New England to Virginia. In August in New England, the temperature quickly went from the 90’s to freezing, killing all crops. This started a mass migration from New England to Indiana and Illinois, allowing those two territories to gain enough population to become states. Corn, potato, and wheat crops were total failures in the UK and Ireland. Oat prices increase 700%. There were many outbreaks of typhus.
1816 – 1823: Worldwide cholera epidemic.
Other Cooling Indications:
According to John L. Casey, there are many other indications that the Earth’s cooling is well underway:
• Ocean temperatures are showing a clear cooling trend recently.
• The Pacific Ocean is cooling and will continue to cool for 20-30 years.
• World glacial ice is growing and has been growing for 10 years.
• Antarctica is getting colder at the rate of 0.7 degrees C per decade. The ice sheet is growing and has grown by 45 billion tons in the past 10 years.
• Greenland has cooled 1.29 degrees C from 1958 – 2001. The warmest recent decade in Greenland was the 1930’s. The Greenland Ice Sheet has been growing since 1992 and has been growing by 11 billion tons per year. Some studies that reported shrinking ice in Greenland only measured ice on the south coast when it was being affected by the Gulf Stream.
• Mountain glacial ice stopped retreating in 1998 and has since started growing.
• In 2008, Al Gore predicted that all the Arctic ice would be gone by 2013.
John L. Casey has made the following conclusions based on his research:
• The primary cause of climate change is the Sun, not greenhouse gas levels. Global warming has already ended.
• The changes are cyclical and predictable with better than 90% accuracy.
• A new Solar Minimum has already begun and will affect our weather for the next 3 decades.
• The Sun has entered a period of “Solar Hibernation”, as it does every 206 years.
• The coldest expected weather with the most severe crop damage is expected to be in the late 2020’s to the early 2030’s.
• The climate models that predicted rising temperatures due to increasing levels of greenhouse gasses have already failed because they did not predict the current pause in the warming trend.
There are at least 73 researchers with 40 peer reviewed papers that have similar conclusions in regards to the effects of the 206 year solar cycle minimum. Sixteen separate scientists predicted the coming cold period.
I searched for critical reviews of the book. I could find no serious, negative reviews of the book.
I have read other papers on this subject that were critically reviewed by researchers from the global warming lobby. All of them dismissed the effects of the sun on climate, but none of the reviews made any substantial objections to the papers.
I recommend this book for anyone interested in climate. The book is written for people with little or no climate experience or education.
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Mandatory reading for skeptics of 50,000 degree nuclear fusion powered balls of fire
Dark Winter is a breathe of fresh air in a world full of politically polluted books on the subject of climate change. All one has to do is look at a scale model of the solar system to realize that the giant ball of fire extremely close to our humble little planet is, undoubtedly, the main factor regarding temperature fluctuations. Casey might just be the only adult that still has the common sense of a child regarding this topic. Nobody is saying that atmospheric gases do not play a role in global temperatures, but should they be our point of focus. While we are worrying about a 1 or 2 degree fluctuation in temperature over 100 years due to greenhouse gases, the sun can cause greater change in much shorter periods of time. The sun is anything but a constant, and treating it as such could be one of the biggest mistakes of modern history. I applaud Casey's work, but I suspect it will not be taken seriously until politicians figure out a way to regulate and tax solar activity.
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