Leif Svalgaard: Solar-Terrestrial Manifesto – Flatter Sun – Flatter Earth

Over on WUWT, Leif Svalgaard has published his solar-terrestrial manifesto. I’ve left a couple of comments…

Here’s what Leif plans for the future of solar science – A newly homogenised and flat solar history:

“new reconstructions of Total Solar Irradiance also contribute to our improved knowledge (or at least best guess) of the environment of the Earth System, with obvious implications for management of space-based technological assets or, perhaps, even climate.”

Well since Leif is endeavouring to fit the sunspot and TSI data to the carbon agenda by ironing it as flat as possible, I guess we all know what the subtext of this passage means.

“A strong check and confirmation of the effect of the weighting have been carried out the past year by the Locarno observers, counting both with and without weighting, so the magnitude of the effect of the weighting is now established and is no longer an open issue.”

Attempting a calibration and imposing it on long term historical sunspot records at a time when the sunspot count is anomalously diverging from other solar metrics such as the f10.7 flux is not a valid procedure IMO.

The point was that the Group sunspot number is flawed and must be abandoned. The hard work by Hoyt and Schatten has not beem in vain because the data they dug up will be incorporated in the revised sunspot number, just calibrated correctly.

Since we don’t know much about how the Sun operates over long timescales, it would seem prudent to continue to monitor all of the longer datasets and update them. If we are seeing less groups but more spots, that in itself may be important, we don’t know. To “abandon” metrics maintained over centuries because they don’t fit the agenda is a dereliction of scientific duty.

I agree we should endeavour to ‘calibrate correctly’. ‘Adjusting’ dispararate metrics so they ‘all sing off the same hymn sheet’ may not be the way to do that however. The Sun is still mysterious and since Leif has just abandoned 50 years of deep dynamo theory (Which he previously assured us was “well grounded in solid physics”) in favour of a ‘shallow dynamo’ hypothesis, we should treasure our historical records and not allow them to be manipulated by someone who has strong opinions on the ‘correct’ theory.

James Hansen and NASA GIStemp springs to mind.

Metrics should be maintained and calibrated by impartial bodies whose principle remit is the custodianship of data, not its application. Allowing the definition and calibration of the metrics to be in the same hands as those writing new theory is a recipe for bias. We should not repeat the mistakes of the past so quickly.