ABD - Freezelock

The Association of British Drivers
Freezelock

UK Transport Network Set For Freezelock

The general tone of long-range weather forecasting suggests that, due to global warming, we can expect hotter summers and milder winters. Yet this autumn (2005) the Government has issued a warning that the winter of 2005/6 may be much colder than we have experienced for some time.

The environment section of the ABD website explains elsewhere (Climate Change Truths; CO2 Cause or Effect?) that there is overwhelming evidence that the place of carbon dioxide as a major climate forcing is at odds with the observed data — over the last 400 years and beyond — and that, to quote Danish meteorologist Dr K Lassen,

"70-90 years oscillations in global mean temperature are correlated with corresponding oscillations in solar activity. Whereas the solar influence is obvious in the data from the last four centuries, signatures of human activity are not yet distinguishable in the observations."

These solar influences have been very marked in recent centuries. The 'Little Ice Age' which corresponded to the Maunder Minimum in solar activity (1645–1715) was a period of cooling when the River Thames froze repeatedly to such a depth that frost festivals were held on it. Earlier still, the Medieval Warm Period of the 12th and 13th centuries saw global temperatures significantly higher than today. These events are well documented in historical records well before any cars or factories existed. Solar influences can explain both, carbon dioxide emissions cannot.

Natural climate change - no visible anthropogenic elements

Global Temperatures over 1000 years showing global warming and cooling
A researcher with a successful track record in climate prediction using solar techniques has also developed a convincing explanation for this success.

Dr Theodor Landscheidt of the Schroeter Institute, Germany, has shown how spin-orbit coupling provides a credible mechanism for perturbations in the solar dynamo and how this influence varies over time. Spin-orbit coupling refers to a mechanism for transfer of energy from orbital motion to energy of rotation (spin). A web version of some relevant work can be found here: http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/Calen/Landscheidt-1.html

The IPCC view, given almost total prominence by the media, is that the solar forcing of terrestrial climate is negligible. This is founded on satellite observations from about 1978 on, showing that the Sun's total irradiance changes by only 0.1 percent during the course of the 11-year sunspot cycle. For some reason their analysis does not extend to the Sun's eruptional activity (energetic flares, coronal mass ejections, eruptive prominences), energetic charged particles from these have a strong impact through the solar wind and therefore on the Earth's atmosphere. The total magnetic flux leaving the Sun, corralled in the solar wind, has risen by a factor of 2.3 since 1901 (Lockwood et al., Nature 399, 437-439, 1999), while the average global temperature on earth increased by about half a degree Celsius. Much of this temperature increase happened before the most significant increases in anthropogenic carbon dioxide which are claimed to have caused it.

Solar System photo-diagram. Source:NASA

Landscheidt focuses beyond the average 11-year visible (22 year magnetic) sunspot cycle and examines how spin-orbit coupling can perturb the solar dynamo on timescales stretching to centuries. It might be thought that as it lies at the centre of the Solar System, the Sun has no orbital motion. Due to the large amount of mass and angular momentum held by the gas giant planets, the centre of mass of the Solar System often lies well outside the visible surface of the Sun. Transfer of momentum between orbit and spin is possible and will have an impact on the differential solar rotation we see. This movement of the Sun through its own magnetic fields provide one mechanism for dynamo perturbation.

The dynamics of the Sun's motion about the Solar System centre of mass can be examined through the changes in its orbital angular momentum. The rate of change over time gives the torque driving the Sun's motion about the centre of mass. Variations in the rotary force defined by the changes in torque over time are a key element in the link between solar dynamics and climate as they make it possible to forecast Gleissberg extrema — maxima and minima in the Gleissberg cycle of solar activity — for hundreds of years and even millennia (for detailed information on the Gleissberg cycle see the Landscheidt reference given above).

This 166-year cycle through the period 900–2300 is shown below, in a chart taken from Landscheidt's paper. The vertical axis shows the rate of change of torque over time, the horizontal axis represents time and covers the period from 900 to 2300 AD. After the phase reversal that took place ca. 1120 all Gleissberg maxima (marked by solid triangles) coincide with extreme points on the curve for rate of change of torque, but ca. 1976 the pattern changed again because of a new phase change.

After the Gleissberg cycle maximum of ca. 1952, a second Gleissberg maximum occurred around 1984 without an intermittent minimum. Only the single 11-year sunspot cycle in the middle between the maxima showed lower sunspot activity, whereas the two previous and two later cycles reached very high levels. The mean of the maxima of the five cycles reached a value not directly observed before. We have to go back to the Medieval Warm Period to find a similar pattern. In this way both the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period have convincing explanations rooted in solar activity, or the lack of it. The phase reversals mentioned above, indicated by arrows, explain these special features, occurring only twice in nearly two thousand years.

The recent Gleissberg cycle maximum around 1984 is the first in a long sequence of maxima connected with zero phases in the 166-year cycle, four of which are marked by empty circles in the diagram from Landscheidt's paper.

On the basis of past behaviour, we can be confident that the current phase should last at least through 2500 up to the next phase inversion. This allows equally confident predictions to be made from the data on solar spin-orbit coupling. Because of the clear and established link between Gleissberg cycle and climate, future periods of warmer or cooler climate can be predicted for hundreds of years. The next cool phase is to be expected around 2030, and according to the evidence from past solar activity and climate records, this is very likely to be a cool period of similar magnitude to the Little Ice Age.

And so we see an initial severe winter warning from Government at a time when we are also seeing the run-up to a Gleissberg-induced period of colder weather mirrored in curious solar behaviour (see Schatten., K., Geophys. Res. Letters. Vol. 32, 2005) where the author notes that "Coronal features do not show the characteristics of well-formed polar coronal holes associated with typical solar minima, but rather resemble stunted polar field levels. The question is raised: why have the Sun's polar fields not strengthened comparably in the 2000-2005 time period, as in the previous few decades? The dramatic field changes seen suggest the importance of field motions associated with photospheric (e.g. meridional) flows for the Sun's dynamo."

The conclusion to be drawn from this is that current inter-governmental policies for 'controlling' climate are risible King Canute strategies, not only because climate change on much longer timescales than centuries is also observed, and this is linked to changes in the Earth's axial tilt, its eccentric orbit, and cosmic ray flux - as well as sporadic events such as volcanic eruptions and impacts from space, but also because carbon dioxide is not a major climate forcing as claimed (see Caillon, N., Severinghaus, J.P., Jouzel, J., Barnola, J.-M., Kang, J. and Lipenkov, V.Y., Timing of atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic temperature changes across Termination III. Science 299: 1728-1731, 2003, where the authors conclude that carbon dioxide is not the forcing that drives the climatic system). Fuel duty, the climate change levy and other measures targeting carbon dioxide emissions cannot achieve their purpose. If politicians were to use the revenue to prepare for natural and inevitable climate change that would at least make some sense.

This essential preparation is barely noticeable. Past records of officialdom's ability to handle severe cold suggest that the country's crumbling transport network is about to freeze solid this winter, regardless of worse to come. This freezelock will have disastrous consequences for our health, well-being, and economic prosperity (see ABD PR number 469).