Global Warming and Solar Minimum: a Response to Renee Parsons

Following are my comments about Global Warming Morphs Into the Solar Minimum by Renee Parsons.

As far as I know climate change (CC) computer models include the variations of insolation (i.e., sunspot cycles, and the Milankovitch Cycles set by solar-earth alignments and angle changes over time) as part of the external radiation driving function (i.e., solar radiation falling on Earth over time). IPCC is an agency that reviews peer reviewed science publications by research scientist/modelers calculating estimated resulting average (and regional) global temperatures of the biosphere over time. Said researchers then try to compare their calculations with experimental data / field observations of CO2, CH4 and air/ocean temperature measurements (current and fossil from: tree rings, ice cores, mineral deposits).

Also, it has long been known to the scientists that the amount and distribution of water vapor and droplets in the atmosphere — clouds, fog, mist, humidity — is/are the most difficult parameter (parameters) to include in the computer models because such atmospheric moisture is so rapidly transient and localized, and so intimately entwined with local temperature and wind patterns (weather). Water vapor has always been known as the major gas/vapor storage medium of atmospheric heat. Also, clouds have a significant effect on the magnitude of the albedo (sunlight reflection coefficient, hence a localized cooling effect, similar to that of snow and ice caps)

CC modelers try to include these atmospheric water effects by “knobs” and “fudge factors” in the computer codes, because simulating them from fundamental principles is so incredibly difficult: because of their very fine spatial scale localization, and their extremely rapid transience. The idea being that some level of inclusion (of humidity physics), however sketchy and approximate, is better than none. So different models (computer programs) will give slightly different “answers” depending on what assumptions and “knob settings” the programmers used. That is why IPCC reviews many such published results and arrives at a consensus among them, in characterizing current science’s understanding of CC geo-chemical physics.

Her last paragraph is quite a stretch, really reaching into science fiction. Zero Point Energy is certainly a physics concept (and reality), but humanity has no access to it as a controllable source of “free” energy. “Interstellar vehicles” meaning comets, asteroids, meteors, rocks, human-produced-and-abandoned space junk, cosmic dust, planets and stars all move because of gravity and inertia (Isaac Newton), and where “pushed” by radiation pressure (from sunlight and starlight) and shock waves from stellar explosions (of mass, magnetism and radiation).

The “free” energy Nikola Tesla tapped into was the electrical potential (voltage difference) between the surface of the Earth and the ionosphere: a high altitude layer of electrically charge atmosphere, caused by ionization initiated by UV rays from the Sun, as well as the capture of solar-ejected protons (positive electrically charged particles that had been the nuclei of hydrogen atoms), whose capture by Earth’s magnetic field causes the Aurora Borealis. Tesla figured out how to pump energy into this “earth battery” (or earth capacitor, as he was using the Earth as part of an LC circuit) by injecting radio waves of a particular frequency that resonated with the size of this battery gap, and bounced within it (reflecting back down from the ionosphere), cycling the globe. So, a receiving station elsewhere on Earth could pick up such signals, and “gain energy.” But it is not an efficient process for transmitting energy in large amounts for industrial purposes, over distance — it’s basically a very limited form of “radio” that when converted to audio sounds like recorded whale clicks and whistles. 

So, I am somewhat skeptical of all of Renee Parsons’ statements and conclusions; many are okay, but the overall outlook is a bit “spacey,” in my view.

ALSO, I have tried to give a little bit of an explanation of non-linearity effects (lags, gaps, stops, accelerations, multi-valuedness) in CC geo-chemical physics here:

The Latent Heat of Climate Change, Redux

28 May 2019 (29 July 213)

https://manuelgarciajr.com/2019/05/28/the-latent-heat-of-climate-change-redux/

Finally, for reference, my detailed outline of CC geo-chemical physics, and my detailed description of CC computer modeling (and the IPCC) are presented in the following two articles, respectively:

Closing The Cycle: Energy and Climate Change
25 January 2014
https://manuelgarciajr.com/2014/01/25/closing-the-cycle-energy-and-climate-change/

Climate and Carbon, Consensus and Contention
18 September 2017, (4 June 2007)
https://manuelgarciajr.com/2017/09/18/climate-and-carbon-consensus-and-contention/

I am glad as more people get interested in global warming / climate change, but I also want their understanding and pronouncements about this topic to be accurate: scientifically sound, and reasonable.

Manuel Garcia Jr, once a physicist, is now a lazy househusband who writes out his analyses of physical or societal problems or interactions. He can be reached at mangogarcia@att.net