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Co-author of “The Neglected Sun“/geologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning made a presentation at the 7th International Conference for Climate and Energy in Mannheim, Germany, back in April. EIKE has now put it up. The presentation is in German and so I am providing below a round up of the main points made by Lüning.

Lüning starts by reminding the listeners that geology is key to understanding the past, which in turn can help us to better understand the present and provide valuable clues of what to expect in the future.

The German geologist is a specialist in the geology of Africa. The scientitific literature shows that the Sahara was green a mere 6000 years ago, and his slide at the 0:45 mark show remnants of that time.

Remnants of a green Sahara, 6000 years ago.

Back then, in the mid Holocene, it was 1 – 2°C warmer than it is today and the Sahara was teeming with wildlife.

At the 2:20 mark Lüning shows a slide of cave painting, in the middle of the Sahara, depicting wildlife seen at the time:

Cave paintings of wildlife in the middle of the Sahara.

The changes over the Holocener period clearly are greater than what we are seeing today and are due to natural flcutucations, primarily solar activity. Lüning adds at the 3:40 mark:

This is a geological context that unfortunately is lost on many people like physicists who believe their formulae more than they believe the true facts.”

Greenland is cooling

At the 4:10 mark Lüning brings up the Axforf paper of 2013, which shows Greenland was “2 – 3°C warmer 6000 to 4000 years ago than it is today” and that the ice survived.

At the 5:00 mark he presents a 2013 paper by Lecavalier et al showing that Greenland has cooled 2.5°C over the last 8000 years.

Greenland has cooled 2.5°C over the last 8000 years.

On his slide Lüning writes:

Despite the thousands of years of continuous warmth, the dramatic ice collapse never occurred.”

At the 6:00 mark Lüning shows a chart from Bob Carter, also showing nothing unusual is happening, Co2 playing only a minor role.

At the 7:30 mark Lüning brings up the IPCC 1990 millennium temperature chart that distinctly shows a warmer Medieval Warm Period and a little ice age. At the 8:30 various hockey sticks are shown, which Lüning describes as “incorrect”. “Even Michael Mann had to admit that he had exaggerated”.

Climate driven by solar activity

Starting at the 9:45 mark, his charts show that solar activity correlates well with temperature, which Lüning calls “a surprisingly good match”. He then presents the various solar cycles that the sun undergoes, going into the works of Gerard Bond, who made temperature reconstructions using layers of ice-rafted material in the North Atlantic. Lüning calls the synchronicity between solar activity and temperature found by Bond “stunning”. See chart 13:20 mark below)

Strong correlation between solar activity and temperature.

At around the 14:00 mark Lüning recounts how he naively expected an explanation from Rahmstorf on why Bond’s findings were being ignored. Rahmstorf replied that “Bond’s cycles could not be reproduced by other groups” and that “Bond himself later stopped believing in his cycles” and that “Bond cycles are a scientific dead-end”.

But at the 14:45 mark, Lüning clearly shows this was not true, and presents a 2003 paper by Hu et al, where Bond is one of the co-authors. That paper too also showed a good correlation between solar activity and temperature over the last 12,000 years. Here the theory was enforced, rather than not being reproducible, as Rahmstorf falsely claimed. Another 2005 paper that included Bond as a co-author is shown at the 15:45 mark.

Clear solar signal found worldwide

Lüning then shows other papers showing solar activity driving climate patterns all over the world, in places like Australia, Oman, North Caorlina, China. He sums them up in chart at the 17:04 mark.

IPCC models have no chance of success

Lüning says that there is clearly a solar signal in climate over the millenniums, and therefore says the IPCC models have no chance of ever successfully modeling the climate. He says that the IPCC models have gotten worse, and not better.

Lüning at the 20:00 mark presents evidence showing that the recent warming is due primarily to the extremely high level of solar activity over the 20th century. Even the flowrate of the Parana River in South America is in sync with solar activity (21:45). Even Lake Victoria fluctuates in sync with solar activity (22:30).

Lüning then brings up the solar amplifier and Svensmark’s theory (23:20) and that cloud formation is modulated by cosmic ray intensity, which in turn is modulated by the sun’s magnetic field. Lüning believes such research deserves some funding (applause) and that the sun acting as one of the major climate modulators makes perfect sense.

Warming of last 20 years “statistically insignificant”

At the 28:00 mark he calls the warming of the last 20 years “statistically insignificant” and says it has indeed stagnated no matter which dataset you look at. At the 28:15 mark he shows how the IPCC’s previous prognoses are “all too hot”, see following figure:

Models have all been false.

At the 29:00 mark he calls the recent claims of an unprecedented warning unjustified and shows that similar warming episodes have occurred in the past. Even Phil Jones admits it.

Ocean cycles responsible for the 1980-2000 warming

At the 30:00 mark Lüning says the natural oceanic cycles have been responsible for the recent decadal temperature fluctuations, and at least for half of the most recent 1980 – 2000 warming. The remaining half has to be responsibly assigned to the other factors. At the 31:20 mark, he believes that cooling is ahead for the 20 years:

Cooling projected for the next 20 years.

Cooling ahead

He thinks it is also possible that the low solar activity will lead to a cooling of one or two tenths of a degree Celsius over the next 5 years, which he says “could be very interesting for the discussion” (32:00). He cites Judith Curry. At the 33:00 mark he cites other papers showing that CO2 climate sensitivity has been overstated and needs to be corrected.

At the 37:30 mark Lüning tells the listeners he expects a huge drop in overall solar activity to take hold in the decades ahead and global temperatures to drop by 0.2°C by 2030 (see following chart).

Lüning believes 0.2°C cooling is possible by 2030.

All graphics cropped from Lüning’s presentation with permission.