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A reader has brought my attention to more new papers. I haven’t found any mention of them at other sites like WUWT. Perhaps they aren’t able to get through the Gate of Willis.

At any rate, just because I choose to bring them up, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I agree with them. I do strongly feel, however, that these papers need to be brought to the public’s attention. They have, after all, gone through the peer-review process and appeared in respectable journals.

The latest paper NTZ wishes to present today is one lead-authored by Chantal Camenisch of the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern in Switzerland, appearing in the Journal Climate of the Past bearing the title: “The early Spörer Minimum – a period of extraordinary climate and socio-economic changes in Western and Central Europe“.

Obviously, just as dozens of other papers have shown already, low solar activity has something to do with cooling climates, famine and socioeconomic collapse. So it’s probably a very good thing the 20th century saw high solar activity, but a bad thing that we may be starting an extended period of low solar activity.

The papers abstract:

Climate reconstructions from a multitude of natural and human archives indicate that, during winter, the period of the early Spörer Minimum (1431–1440 CE) was the coldest decade in Central Europe in the 15th century. The particularly cold winters and normal but wet summers resulted in a strong seasonal cycle that challenged food production and led to increasing food prices, a subsistence crisis, and a famine in parts of Europe. As a consequence, authorities implemented adaptation measures, such as the installation of grain storage capacities, in order to be prepared for future events. The 15th century is characterised by a grand solar minimum and enhanced volcanic activity, which both imply a reduction of seasonality. Climate model simulations show that periods with cold winters and strong seasonality are associated with internal climate variability rather than external forcing. Accordingly, it is hypothesised that the reconstructed extreme climatic conditions during this decade occurred by chance and in relation to the partly chaotic, internal variability within the climate system.

Again here climate science seems to have the chronic habit of blaming unexpected cold or warming pauses on “chance”, as the above paper does. Yet, under the bottom line, the paper is just the latest confirming that climate swings and fluctuations are indeed natural and have always happened in the past. Often solar activity is very much in the works.

Moreover, today’s possible 0.05°C of warming we may have seen over the past 2 decades is nothing compared to the stuff we’ve seen before.

It’s time to end the hysterics.