Earth now possibly warmest in 2,000 years: thanks to Sun not CO2

Abstract

GEOCLASTICA LTD TECHNICAL NOTE 2020-3. A single slide, aimed at scientists and non-scientists alike, says it all in 2 minutes. For my other brief contributions over the last three years, based on full-time, unpaid (hence impartial) literature research on ALL scientific aspects of climate- and sea-level change (geology, archaeology, palaeoclimatology, oceanography, astrophysics, meteorology, 'climate science', etc.), by an independent geologist (me) with 40 years of global experience before and after my doctorate (Oxford), please click on my Project "Climate- and sea-level change caused by Sun not CO2" and scroll down. Ongoing GlOBAL WARMING (since 1820AD) is entirely natural, driven by the Sun. The Sun’s biggest increase (1700-1991) in 2,000 years matches the strongest warming (1820-2017) in 2,000 years, delayed ~100 years by ocean thermal inertia (slowness of mixing). The delay has varied with time and is now ~75 years. This ‘Modern Warming’ is the recovery from the Little Ice Age, coldest episode of the entire Holocene interglacial period (the last 11,650 years). We are now returning toward temperatures that were not unusual in the 'Holocene Climatic Optimum' (the clue is in the name, "optimum", for humans). Modern Warming will continue until ~2065, corresponding to the Modern Solar Grand Maximum’s 1991 magnetic peak, plus the ~75-year time-lag. Enjoy the slight extra warmth (throughout human history far more people have died of cold than heat). Rejoice at Earth’s continued greening and increasing agricultural productivity thanks to CO2, now rising clear of plant-starvation level but still far below normal levels of the past 500 million years. Cooling will then start ~2065, for at least 29 years, i.e. the 29-year solar decline from 1991 to date (2020). There has never been a better time to be alive than today, in terms of average human longevity and proportion of humanity in poverty. However, there IS bad news: the imminent (in fact underway), unstoppable, Sun-driven sea-level rise of about 3 metres by 2100 (see my other contributions here on ResearchGate, especially this one, uploaded last month … https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339875642. Shockingly, idiotically, based entirely on the biased and under-qualified (no geologists! - see my Technical Note 2019-10) IPCC's insistence that life-giving CO2 is a 'pollutant', our governments are throwing $$ trillions away, 'tackling' an imaginary 'climate emergency' and a fictitious CO2 enemy, instead of preparing for this inevitable large sea-level rise, e.g. relocation of the world's entire coastal infrastructure (airports, harbours, military installations, nuclear power stations, businesses, homes, etc., etc.) and hundreds of millions of people to higher ground.

Full text

Earth now possibly* warmest in 2,000 years: thanks to Sun not CO2
Dr Roger Higgs, DPhil geology Oxford 1982-86, Geoclastica Ltd Technical Note 2020-3, 30th Mar 2020 (amended 12th Dec 2020)
Slide 1. Earth’s surface temperature (Graph 2) correlates with Sun’s activity (Graph 1) but not CO2 (Graph 3)
* see Note 2 (Slide 2).
Notes & References:
see Slides 2, 3, 4
3) Atmospheric CO2 MacFarling et al. 2006 From Antarctic ice core
2) Global average surface
temperature PAGES2k 2019
From proxies, e.g. tree-ring widths,
ice-core isotopes, coral. Pale grey = error
bands. Black line (far right) = 1850-2017
thermometer readings (30-year smoothing),
i.e. the “Instrumental target” (see legend).
~1850 start of industrial CO2 emissions
CO2 = 370ppm
in 2000
No decline; ‘sawteeth’ negligible relative to post-1850 rise
1000AD%
Little Ice Age
Sawtooth-style decline
BC%%AD% 2000AD%
TIME%
1) Sun’s activity Solanki et al. 2004
Sawtooth-style decline
Sun’s ‘Modern Grand
Maximum’ 1937-2004,
peaked 1991
Time-lag longer, ~150-years,
in Little Ice Age
Time-lag of decades, due to ocean thermal inertia (Note 3)
Blue = sunspot number
reconstructed from
tree-ring C14.
Red = observed
Group Sunspot
Number since 1610AD.
See Note 4.
NO SURPRISE:
Sun’s largest
upswing & highest
peak in >2,000yrs
caused ... Earth’s
fastest warming
& highest temp.
in >2,000yrs
Green dots (8) in Graphs 1 & 2:
check proportionality
Future peak
temp. (~2065)

Earth now supposedly warmest in 2,000 years, thanks to Sun not CO2
Dr Roger Higgs, DPhil geology Oxford 1982-86, Geoclastica Ltd Technical Note 2020-3, 30th Mar 2020 (amended 4th Aug 2020)
Slide 2. Notes
1. The Sun’s activity (Slide 1, graph 1) is related to its magnetic output, affecting Earth’s temperature (e.g. Svensmark 2007), i.e.
increased magnetic flux deflects more cosmic rays, therefore fewer clouds form, hence less incoming solar energy is reflected, instead
warming the ocean and, in turn, the air.
2. Earth is now warmest in 2,000 years, according to the PAGES2k palaeoclimate consortium (PAGES2k 2013, 2019). However, three
problems with this claim are:
(A) PAGES2k is strongly related to the UNITED NATIONS Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; McIntyre 2013),
whose inbuilt bias is extreme (IPCC’s very existence requires ‘man-made global warming’ to be true; Higgs 2019a);
(B) four of the seven world regions whose proxy temperatures were evaluated by PAGES2k are not now warmer than in the past
2,000 years (PAGES2k 2013 fig. 2; Tisdale 2013; slide 1 of Higgs 2020c). Therefore PAGES2k’s claim depends on their world
averaging procedure, which is wide open to criticism; and
(C) globally averaged thermometer readings (graph 2, 1850-2017 ‘Instrumental target’ black curve at far right) are biased upward by
the ‘Urban Heat Island’ (UHI) effect (Heller 2019). The UHI effect explains why, only since 1985, land air has supposedly warmed
more than the ocean (not possible; see Bullet 5A of Higgs 2019b), inflating the average land-plus-ocean temperature rise (Met Office
2020 graphs 2, 3, 4; NASA graphs 2, 3). Thus, for the thermometer-versus-proxy ‘overlap’ period (post-1850 in graph 2), PAGES2k
probably ‘cherry-picked’ higher proxy values (e.g. McIntyre 2013) to match the inflated ‘target’ thermometer record.
3. The Sun’s biggest increase (1700-1991, graph 1) in >2,000 years matches the strongest warming (1820-2017, graph 2), delayed by
ocean thermal inertia (slow mixing). The lag varies with time and is now ~60yrs (Higgs 2020b). This ‘Modern Warming’ is the
recovery from the Little Ice Age (LIA, graph 2), coldest episode of the entire Holocene interglacial period, the last 11,650 years
(Marcott et al. 2013). We are now enjoying temperatures that were not unusual in the Holocene Climatic Optimum (Wiki; Higgs
2020a), when earlier civilisations thrived (Andy May 2016).
4. The red curve in graph 1 is the classical Group Sunspot Number (Hoyt & Schatten 1998). The Royal Observatory of Belgium,
linked to the IPCC (NCC 2010), “corrected” this sunspot series, untenably (slide 3 of Higgs 2019c).
... continued

Earth now supposedly warmest in 2,000 years, thanks to Sun not CO2
Dr Roger Higgs, DPhil geology Oxford 1982-86, Geoclastica Ltd Technical Note 2020-3, 30th Mar 2020 (amended 4th Aug 2020)
Slide 3. Notes (continued)
5. In graph 1, calibration (‘splicing’) between the blue curve (proxy C14) and the red curve (sunspots) is uncertain (Usoskin 2017).
Other reconstructions shift the sunspot curve downward, making the Sun’s modern Grand Maximum less marked, though still the
highest of the last 2,000 years (e.g. Usoskin et al. 2014). However, supporting the Solanki et al. (2004) version (graph 1), a
reconstruction for 7000BC to 1950AD based only on proxies (C14, Be10) shows the Sun’s output in 1950 already the highest since
7000BC (Steinhilber et al. 2012, figs 4A, S19, S20).
6. I propose that Holocene global temperature is essentially a proxy for solar activity, based on: (A) good visual correlation of solar
output and global temperature, and their obvious proportionality (i.e. in graphs 1 and 2, the relative heights of the hockey-stick
‘handle’ versus the ‘blade’ is the same; Higgs 2017); and (B) the non-correlation with CO2 (Note 7).
7. CO2 (graph 3) and temperature (graph 2) do not match until the accidental correlation after 1850 (start of industrial CO2
emissions). Until then, CO2 since 1AD varied 270 to 290ppm (very like the 270-300ppm of the previous four interglacials which,
nevertheless, were all warmer than the Holocene). Regardless, the PAGES2k group, suppliers of palaeotemperature data to IPCC
(McIntyre 2013), blames Modern Warming on CO2, e.g. “solar forcing is not detectable at multidecadal timescales ... suggesting that solar
variability ... cannot account for GMST ... (global mean surface temperature) ... variability over the Common Era” (PAGES2k 2019, first
author R. Neukom); and “the warmest period of the past two millennia occurred during the twentieth century for more than 98 per cent of the
globe. This provides strong evidence that anthropogenic global warming is ... unparalleled in terms of absolute temperatures5 ... within the context
of the past 2,000 years” (Neukom et al. 2019; NB their superscript 5 refers to IPCC 2013, which cites two papers by Neukom).
8. PAGES2k 2019 & Neukom 2019 (Note 7) provoked alarmist media headlines such as “extent of current global warming is
‘unparalleled’“ (Dunphy 2019), neglecting to add “in 2,000 years” and failing to state that 2,000 years is a mere two-millionth of
Earth’s 4.5 billion-year age. (Incredibly IPCC likewise ignores geologists; Higgs 2019a.) Many bandwagon-jumpers parrot the IPCC
and PAGES2k Sun deniers, e.g. IPCC-contributing climate scientist and university lecturer Hawkins (2020), who leaps to the usual
facile conclusions that Modern Warming can’t be good and must be caused by CO2.
9. My prediction: Modern Warming (with ‘saw-tooth’ ups and downs) will continue until ~2050, corresponding to the Sun’s saw-
tooth build-up to the 1991 peak magnetic output of the modern solar Grand Maximum (1937-2004; slide 2 of Higgs 2020b), lagged by
~60 years (Note 3). Cooling will then begin ~2050, and will last for at least 29 years (i.e. solar decline from 1991 to date [2020]).
Unfortunately a Sun-driven sea-level rise of ~3 metres (sic) by 2100 is inevitable, by ice collapse in Antarctica, again a delayed (by
ocean thermal inertia and slow circulation) reaction to the Sun’s just-ended Grand Maximum (Higgs 2020b). CO2 is blameless.

Earth now supposedly warmest in 2,000 years, thanks to Sun not CO2
Dr Roger Higgs, DPhil geology Oxford 1982-86, Geoclastica Ltd Technical Note 2020-3, 30th Mar 2020 (amended 4th Aug 2020)
Slide 4. References
Andy May 2016. https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/climate-and-human-civilization-over-the-last-18000-years/
Dunphy 2019. https://www.europeanscientist.com/en/environment/ongoing-extent-of-global-warming-is-unparalleled/
Hawkins 2020. https://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2020/2019-years/
Heller 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFPRMV2p5cY
Higgs 2017. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318722766
Higgs 2019a. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331974185
Higgs 2019b. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332245803
Higgs 2019c. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336150058
Higgs 2020a. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340869622
Higgs 2020b. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341078096
Higgs 2020c. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343290627
Hoyt & Schatten 1998. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227246521
IPCC 2013. https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter05_FINAL.pdf
MacFarling et al. 2006. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240490870
Marcott et al. 2013. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235885717
McIntyre 2013. https://climateaudit.org/2013/04/19/pages2k-gergis-and-made-for-ipcc-journal-articles/
Met Office 2020. https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/monitoring/index.html
NASA. https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
NCC Belgium.
https://www4.unfccc.int/sites/NAPC/Documents NAP/Adaptation Strategies and Plans/Belgium National Adaptation Strategy 2010.pdf
Neukom et al. 2019. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334662695
PAGES2k Consortium 2013. https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo1797
PAGES2k Consortium 2019 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334668335
Solanki et al. 2004.
https://www.academia.edu/24429303/Unusual_activity_of_the_Sun_during_recent_decades_compared_to_the_previous_11_000_years
Steinhilber et al. 2012. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223986805
Svensmark 2007. https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/48/1/1.18/220765
Tisdale 2013. https://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/a-quick-comment-about-the-pages-continental-temperature-reconstructions/
Usoskin et al. 2014. https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/2014/02/aa23391-14.pdf
Usoskin 2017. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41116-017-0006-9