TWTW  AUG 4  2007


3.  VARIABILITY OF THE SUN’S IRRADIANCE:
Global Warming Water Experts Find Earth’s Warming, Rainfall Linked to Sun
By Dennis T. Avery, Hudson Institute.  Canada Freee Press, July 24, 2007

A team of water experts says the pattern of
droughts and floods in South Africa shows our
global warming was triggered by the variability
of the sun’s irradiance rather than by
human-emitted CO2.  They say variations in South
African rainfall patterns are keyed to periodic
reversals of the sun’s magnetic field–and to the
constantly changing distance between the sun and
the earth as both move through space.
    In South Africa, alternate 11-year sunspot
cycles produce opposite rainfall results.  One
complete “double sun cycle” occurs every 20.8
years: the “first” cycle brings a big flood,
followed by a small drought; the next brings a
big drought, followed by a small flood.
    Lead author Will Alexander used the double
sunspot cycle to publicly predict the end of
major South African droughts in both 1995 and
2006.  He notes that South African droughts have
often been broken at 11-year intervals by severe
floods associated with sunspot maxima–as in 1822,
1841, 1863, 1874 and 1885.  The research summary
appears in the June 2007 issue of the Journal of
the South African Institution of Civil Engineering.
    The South Africans’ conclusion is reinforced
by Dr. Robert Baker of Australia, who told a
recent meeting of the International Geographical
Union that he has found the same 21-year cycle in
Australian drought and rainfall.  Baker says “the
sun is like a musical instrument, vibrating in
complex patterns,” with all of the planets moving in similar relationships.
    H. N. Bhalme and D. A. Mooley published
similar conclusions about India’s floods and
droughts in the Journal of Applied Meteorology,
September, 1981, based on an Indian flood index
compiled from 1891 to 1979.  They reported that
“a highly significant 22-year cycle in the flood
area index was nearly in phase with the 22-year
double sunspot cycle.”  Bhalme and Mooley also
noted that the western U.S. has a similar
relationship with the double sunspot cycle and severe flooding.
    Clearly, what these water experts are all
describing is a global climate connection with
the sun.  The number of sunspots on the sun, and
their intensity, varies in a cycle averaging 11
years.  The distance between the sun and the
earth keeps changing slightly and predictably
because 1) they move on slightly varying paths
through space; and 2) both bodies accelerate and
decelerate constantly depending on the combined
gravitational forces of the other big
planets.  These factors apparently produce the
moderate 1,500-year climate cycle on earth, which
was discovered in the Greenland ice cores in
1980s and has since also been found globally in
seabed and lake sediments, fossil pollen, tree rings and peat bogs.
    Earth’s recent global warming occurred too
early–before 1940–to be blamed on human CO2
emissions. The net global warming since 1940 is
only 0.2 degrees C, with none at all since
1998.  There’s little correlation between the
earth’s recent temperatures and CO2 levels, but a
strong correlation between the sunspot index and
subsequent changes in our sea-surface temperatures.
    The 1,500-year climate cycle shifts
temperatures about 2 degrees C above and then 2
degrees C below the long-term average at the
latitude of Washington and Paris, with greater
temperature changes near the poles.  Temperatures
change little near the equator, but rainfall
patterns can change greatly; for example, 5,000
years ago the Sahara was wet enough for grazing
and hunting, while Kenya was very dry.
    The UN climate change panel has declared the
solar variations “too small” to produce the
climate warming of the past 30 years.  However, a
recent Danish experiment showed that the solar
variations may be amplified fourfold because they
create significant changes in the earth’s cloud
cover.  More clouds cool the earth by reflecting
more of the sun’s heat back into outer
space.  The evidence for a sun/climate connection
keeps pouring in, while all we hear from the
Kyoto crowd is “The computer models agree with each other.”
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DENNIS T. AVERY was a senior policy analyst for
the U.S. State Department, where he won the
National Intelligence Medal of Achievement.  He
is the co-author, with atmospheric physicist Fred
Singer, of the book “Unstoppable Global
Warming–Every 1500 Years,” available from Rowman & Littlefield.