Natural Forces Cause Major Climate Shifts

Anastasios A. Tsonis, Kyle Swanson, and Sergey Kravtsov of the Department of Mathematical Sciences, Atmospheric Sciences Group, the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee claim in "A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts" published 12 July 2007 in Geophysical Research Letters claims that the major climate shifts from 1900 to 2000 can be explained in terms of natural forces.

They constructed a network of observed climate indices for the period and studied their collective behavior. The network of indices synchronized a number of times between 1900 and 2000 and when the synchronization event was followed by a steady increase in the coupling strength between indices, the synchronization was destroyed and a new climate state was generated. Significant changes in temperature trend and in ENSO variability result. The great 1970s climate shift was one such event. This mechanism appears consistent with synchronized chaos theory.

Dr. Tsonis believes another shift occurred about the year 2000 and that it may last another 20 years from now. In other words, he believes that we are in a cooling trend which may last until about 2028. This is a viewpoint which a number of other climate researchers have been stating over the last month or so. That we had probably switched into a cooling period was evident in the research I had noted in a number of studies over the last year or so. See for instance, my 26 Mar 08 note on "The Cooling Oceans and Unwarmed Atmosphere."

Apparently, the claim by man-made global warming alarmists that all scientists believe in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming caused by the use of fossil fuels has still another counter data point. It becomes ever more likely that if we can delay the precipitous actions of politicians to use government force to make us give up the use of fossil fuels at enormous expense and hardship, this AGW hypothesis is going to turn into a complete train wreck into a deep gorge. When it does, I wish we could count on a backlash against the politicians who have backed this nonsense of impending catastrophe. Unfortunately, the minimum wage raising fools, the ethanol mandaters, the subprime home mortgage cheerleaders, the bailout bucket brigade, the U.S. cannot win a war, and all other Congressional idiocentricities always seem to get a pass from the public. Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Chris Dodd are all sitting fat and happy in Congress still, just to name a few idiocentric standouts.