A test of global warming theory for smart High School kids to do

(From Will Alexander)

This requires nothing more than high school science, two long data sets (global air temperatures and sunspot numbers) and Microsoft Excel. If readers have children or grandchildren in their families who are familiar with Excel, I strongly suggest that they encourage the youngsters by offering suitable rewards, to undertake the following tasks and interpret the results. The rest of this challenge is addressed to these budding scientists.

Task 1.

Obtain a copy of the annual global air temperature data from 1850 through to 2006 used in the IPCC reports. Load it into Excel and plot it on a graph.

What do you see? The sharp upward trend since 1980 and the sustained high values during the past six years are very clear. This is the graph that the IPCC relies on for evidence of human causality of global warming. Their argument is that this graph is proof of a causal linkage between increasing greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power stations, heavy industries and transport, and increasing global temperatures.

There are serious problems with this conclusion. Not only has there been no sustained increase in global temperatures since 1998, but during the past year global temperatures have shown a marked decrease. This is causing panic among the climate change fraternity. For reasons that remain a complete mystery, the IPCC failed to take the obvious next step. Could this increase be the consequence of a concurrent increase in solar activity? This is extremely important as the solar linkage has to be eliminated before this temperature increase can be attributed to human activities.

Task 2.

Now that you have got the hang of it, it is a simple matter to produce Excel graphs that show the temperature and sunspot data as well as the corresponding linear trend lines. It is common practice in preliminary time series analyses to split the record into two parts and examine them separately. The year 1913 is the beginning of the first double sunspot cycle during the past century and a convenient point to split the data. Analyze the two split records separately in Excel.

Note that while during the period 1913 to 2006 both the sunspot numbers and the global temperatures show increasing trends, during the earlier period 1850 to 1912 BOTH the global temperatures AND sunspot numbers showed DECREASING trends during this 62-year period. Given the above information, it would be a very brave scientist who continues to claim that there is NO linkage between variations in global temperatures and corresponding variations in sunspot activity. Even more importantly, the IPCC scientists were negligent, bordering on irresponsible, not to carry out these simple analyses that go to the very core of climate change science, and need only a few hours of effort using readily available computer software.

Task 3.

The next task may be difficult to understand and you may need some help. You are required to produce a solar periodicity table that can be used for subsequent analyses. You will have the honour of being among the few people in the world to have produced such a table for this purpose. The years during which the sunspot minima associated with the double sunspot cycle occurred are readily identified in the annual sunspot data. These, together with the number of years between them are as follows. 1843 (24) 1867 (22) 1889 (24) 1913 (20) 1933 (21) 1954 (22) 1976 (20) 1996

It is now possible to produce a solar periodicity table that will allow any time series data to be rearranged and analysed using the solar period as a basic time unit. Produce a table with nine columns and 24 rows. Enter the following numbers in the first row 1, 1843, 1867, 1889, 1913, 1933, 1954, 1976 and 1996. Now enter the following numbers in the second row 2, 1844, 1868, 1890, 1914, 1934, 1955, 1977, and 1997. Can you see what we are doing? The first column is the period year and the other columns are the periods whose lengths vary from 20 to 24 years. Call this Table 1.

Task 4.

Make another periodicity table but leave the years blank. Instead, enter the sunspot numbers for the corresponding years in Table 1. Add another three columns to the table and give them headings lowest, highest and average. Call this Table 2. Analyse the data in the rows one by one in Excel and fill in the values in the last three columns.

Now comes the most important diagram in the whole climate change science. Draw a graph with the period years 1 to 24 on the horizontal axis and the sunspot numbers on the vertical axis. Connect the average values with a continuous line and draw vertical lines connecting the highest and lowest values for each period year from 1 through to 24. Excel will do this for you.

What do you see? These are the two sunspot cycles that make up the double sunspot cycle. Note that they have different shapes. Notice in particular that the second cycle is much less active than the first cycle. We are now in year 13 (see Table 1). This means that the world has just entered a quiet period associated with the second cycle. This is why global temperatures have started cooling. You do not have to be a solar physicist to reach this conclusion.

Conclusions

You have now discovered something that very few scientists in the world have discovered. When you are looking for the evidence of the relationship between solar activity and the world's climate all that you have to do is to create a solar periodicity table, enter the data in the table (for example sunspot numbers, temperature, rainfall and river flow) and then plot the results. If you do this you will find solid evidence (i.e. PROOF) of the linkage between these climatic processes and the double sunspot cycle.

You can now suggest that your parents contact me by email at alexwjr@iafrica.com and I will send them a more detailed set of notes on this subject that I presented at a course for practising civil engineers earlier this year. We civil engineers are more interested in facts than in abstract theories that have no practical applications.

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your handy-dandy summary of Obama news and commentary at OBAMA WATCH