Cool - 60 Year Climate Cycle Explains All...
Humans only live a very short time. We only see short term changes in our environments. We are just a pinprick in the massive scheme of things and yet we think "our time" defines "all time". How arrogant and stupid, but typical for a species that has put itself forward as above the rules of Nature for over 200,000 years.
At the moment we think that, in the space of a lifetime, we have burned enough carbon to trip the climate into some form of armageddon that will destroy us all. We have no perspective for this and we don't question the Saviours who are stepping forward with their solutions to the "world problem". These of course, always involve personal sacrifice and the willing contribution of our incomes to the cause. As we have done so many times before in the history of mankind we simply line up behind the cause and prepare to give up everything to make the problems that threaten us go away.
The problem regarding Climate Change is us. It is simply the Climate. It is not the addition of a minor amount of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. It is actually our ignorance of how the world works and has worked for literally millions of years. We, in our pinprick of time, are simply living through changes that are presently occurring and that have always occurred; except that now it impacts us personally instead of simply changing without anyone being around to record and obsess about what was naturally happening in the past.
Our panic is compounded by the fact that in a short space of time (75 years) we have more than doubled our populations and the demographic migrations that have come along with this massive increase has put us in harm's way of these climactic cycles. Weather can no longer be ignored. It happens to us because we are always there when it happens whether it is blowing down our homes or we are watching disasters unfold on our media.
*So, what are these major Climate Crisis problems ? - that politicians allege mankind has created through its insatiable desire to burn carbon to fuel its societies? The major ones include:
1. The ice is melting and is causing the ocean to rise.
2. The ocean is rising and will flood our cities.
3. Toronados are increasing and doing more damage.
4. Hurricanes are increasing and doing more damage.
5. Ocean Temperatures are rising and weather related events such as El Nino are increasing.
6. Ocean temperatures are rising and ocean life is endangered.
7. Extreme heat and droughts are increasing in frequency and intensity.
And what are the Climate Cycles that our politicians are telling us they can reverse? There are three important ones that impact us. Any others are just history and little present concern to us.
Note that the literature will quote spans that differ slightly but basically fall into a 60 to 65 year range. This may explain some of the anomalies you see in dates below. They are close estimates, not absolutes.
1. The Eleven Year Cycle - consists of a Sine Curve style fluctuation of world mean temperature (as measured by Sun activity) in which we undergo one hot period of 5.5 years followed by one cold period of 5.5 years. These are not dramatic earth shaking events, but they do cycle continuously throughout our lives and we could expect to live through as many as eight or nine of these cycles, confusing us when we think the world is warming up beyond our expectations or cooling off beyond our desires. We can all look back and remember hot periods and also cold periods and remember experiences associated with them. They are natural, have always occurred perhaps even seem more natural after we experience several of them. But they are only the building blocks of larger cycles, such as the 60 year cycle. Cycles are closely related to Sun activity as measured by Sunspots.
These 11 year cycles then group together in sets of 6 to form a 33 year / 33 year MAJOR HOT / COLD cycle.
Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) aka. Ocean Temperature Deviation from Norm.
2. The 60 Year Cycle - Each 11 year cycle is not a mirror image of the one before. They vary in intensity as each new cycle plays itself out and generally the pattern is for each cycle to warm more than the one before it in patterns of 3 cycles warming to a HOT peak, and then to progressively cool for 3 cycles after peaking to a form a COLD minimum. Three up - three down creates a 60 year cycle (yes, I know the math sucks, consider it rounding). Now the peaks and troughs of the 60 year cycle are really memorable to humans when they experience them, but there is little opportunity to compare one HOT climate memory to another or one COLD climate memory to another because of our short lifespans. Since these major peaks are separated by 60 years and we go through 6 minor 11 year peaks during this timespan, we lack the ability to differentiate one from the other. We "may" see one full 60 year cycle and perhaps part of another but we never personally see the full run of two peaks (120 years) and certainly nothing more beyond that so we don't realize they are indeed a repetitive cycle. We die too soon to come to that conclusion.
But we have studied the historical records and we know when the cycles have occurred. Depending on your age, you can determine whether you were there for one of the peaks / troughs or are still waiting to experience them. The key years corresponding to HOT peaks and COLD troughs using ocean temperature deviance to estimate the peak years have been recorded to be as follows:
(note: dates presented are roughly the peaks of each period, but when considering the weather associated with these peaks one should really look at the time spans of 5 - 10 years before the peak and then 5 - 10 years after the peak, as they are obviously not sharply defined but rather trending patterns.)
1846 - MAJOR COLD
- 3 mini cycles with overall rising trend.
1878 - MAJOR HOT.
- 3 mini cycles with overall falling trend
1910 - MAJOR COLD.
- 3 mini cycles with overall rising trend.
1942- MAJOR HOT.
- 3 mini cycles with overall falling trend.
1973 - MAJOR COLD.
- 3 mini cycles with overall rising trend.
2004 - MAJOR HOT.
- 3 mini cycles with overall falling trend.
2035 - MAJOR COLD PREDICTED.
*So, are we about to freeze in the dark ? - A note on the upcoming MAJOR COLD PREDICTED pattern: We don't really know how cold things will become as it is in the future and obviously so many factors beyond our control play into it. We can only hope that the period beginning around now and spaning until around 2050 or so will not be a duplicate of the famous 1700's Maunder Minimum, represented below, a period also dubbed the "Little Ice Age" - I've blatantly copied a description of the conditions from the website listed in the button below:
The Maunder Minimum is the most famous cold period of the Little Ice Age. Temperatures plummeted in Europe, the growing season became shorter by more than a month, the number of snowy days increased from a few to 20-30, the ground froze to several feet, alpine glaciers advanced all over the world, glaciers in the Swiss Alps encroached on farms and buried villages, tree-lines in the Alps dropped, sea ports were blocked by sea ice that surrounded Iceland and Holland for about 20 miles, wine grape harvests diminished, and cereal grain harvests failed, leading to mass famines. The Thames River and canals and rivers of the Netherlands froze over during the winter. The population of Iceland decreased by about half. In parts of China, warm-weather crops that had been grown for centuries were abandoned. In North America, early European settlers experienced exceptionally severe winters.
At any rate, we have to pass through another eleven year cycle (#25) to reach the MAJOR COLD peak during the 2030's. (Again, I know the dates are somewhat "grey" - it's not that precise a science.
*So, still believe we're causing Ice melt, hurricanes, tornadoes, sea level rise, etc. ? - A note on the Weather problems that are listed above that we are being held responsible for - the following button will lead you to a relatively complex reference that shows how the majority of these so called problems are also following naturally occurring 60 year cycles. Furthermore a link is drawn to the effect of Sun Solar Activity and even further to the effect of the Planets on the Sun as a base cause for these shifts in temperature and environmental conditions on little Earth, which is 1/330,000 the size of the Sun. - Symptoms of naturally occurring Climate cycles, not miniscule increases in carbon dioxide are what's shaking our complacent world.
3. And finally, there's the 100,000 year Ice Age Cycle - thank God we'll never have to go through this Climate change because when it is due to return in around 3000 years the Ice will return with it and we probably won't survive.
For several hundred thousand years now the Earth has been going through a Climate Change pattern that basically covers the northern hemisphere of the Earth with massive glaciers of ice, composed of water withdrawn from the oceans separating the continents. The ice ages are interspersed with periods of dramatic warming during which the glaciers melt, sea levels rise once again, life springs up and plants flourish, urban centres expand as though nothing threatens their destruction. Humans were in Africa during the last Ice Age, but certainly not in numbers approaching 8 billion as we are today. The migration to other continents occurred around the end of the last Ice Age (the Anthropocene) and flourished throughout the Interglacial warm period we are still in. We are now 8 billion strong, cover the earth with our concrete based urban footprints and have never had to go through another 100,000 year long deep frozen period. We are also 12000 years into the roughly 15000 year long interglacial warm period. 3000 (or so) years to go....
So, what was the point of this diatribe ? - the next time someone tries to make you feel guilty about your hesitation to believe in man made global warming, ask them to specifically describe to you exactly how carbon dioxide causes the Earth to warm up (I mean the chemistry it is based on). I guarantee you they will not be able to answer your question, because they simply don't know. They have merely "drunk the Kool Aid" accepting our leaders' proclamations that we have a national Climate Crisis and that we must reverse our wasteful behaviour to save ourselves. Ask them if they know anything about repetitive Climate cycles and the answer will be the same - they won't.
Don't try to explain it - it is a waste of time, merely drawing glazed eyes and fierce rebuttal, probably using shaming techniques to win their side of the argument. It's a shame that it is not a debate but an argument but that is the way it is in today's world. This blog gives some room for thought to those who are willing to put in the effort to actually engage in such an activity. There is a lot more information out there to explore to broaden one's base of knowledge but hopefully this will serve as a baseline for this engaging activity.
Cliff
Please note: these images and the discussions surrounding them are easily found on Google. I'm not even going to attempt to make a bibliography because this isn't a scientific paper, it's an opinion piece. If you doubt me go search them out. The exercise is quite revealing.